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'Spin City': Give It a Whirl

"Spin City" is firing on all cylinders. It's a slick little contraption custom-built by professionals, and if it's not exactly full of surprises, at least it's roaringly competent.

The ABC sitcom, premiering at 9:30 tonight on Channel 7, brings Michael J. Fox back to television in a role similar to the one he played in the lame movie comedy "The American President," except this time he's top aide to a New York City mayor, not the nation's chief executive. Fox displays expert comedic instincts, which help tremendously, and an amazing lack of sex appeal, which wouldn't matter except that we spend time in the hero's bedroom as well as his office.

In a snappy bit of slapstick, Fox at one point removes his pants as he somersaults across a bed -- but otherwise his home life, as devised by series creator Gary David Goldberg, is a lot less engaging than the workplace stuff, and the idea that he's sleeping with a city hall reporter seems more preposterous than funny.

Fox plays Michael Flaherty, deputy mayor, with Carla Gugino as Ashley Schaeffer, reporter and lover. The unlikely standout among the cast members is Barry Bostwick as the mayor, a sort of lovably obtuse boob who gets in trouble on the first show when he's asked by a reporter whether he'll participate in a gay pride parade and responds, "Are you drunk?" This is the sort of public relations calamity that young Flaherty has to smooth over.

The show begins clunkily, with jokes about a garbage strike that sound like Letterman leftovers and a crack about New Jersey that would have been a groaner 20 years ago. Flaherty enters the office with a corny "All right, everybody, listen up!" Do people really enter offices that way? Well, they should stop.

Fortunately the quality and pace of the laugh lines keep building, and before long the show is charging crickety-crack down the tracks, and it's all aboard for Fun City. Or thereabouts. Slick and shiny as it all is, the show does seem to lack soul. The political commentary is merely glib and facile. And the character of Flaherty probably needs more of a purpose in life than keeping the mayor happy and not getting himself fired.

Flaherty would have more options and would be more true to life if he were not tied down to a live-in romance and used his position of power to enhance his social and sexual life, the way such people often do. But Gugino is perfectly comfortable in her role and adds a slightly warming presence to the show.

Even with the drawbacks, "Spin City" still manages to spin like a top or, maybe more to the point, like a city. Even people who never saw a sitcom before would probably realize that the talent behind this one knows what it's doing.