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'Townies'

Molly Ringwald deserves a sitcom as much as the next guy. Maybe more so. She's still got plenty of allure and mystique, even if her movie career has gone bust. But "Townies," the ABC sitcom premiering at 8:30 tonight on Channel 7, is beneath her, and probably beneath most viewers, too.

There's something naggingly depressing about the show, which plops Ringwald down in a small New England fishing town from which one assumes she would very much like to escape. She shares hopes and dreams and crises with gal pals, nicely played by Jenna Elfman and Lauren Graham, but the situations don't amount to much, and the show seems stranded somewhere between Mayberry and Beverly Hills.

For shock value, the writers include an early scene in which Ringwald invades a men's room because the lines for the women's room are too long. She and her pals are amazed that men urinate "in a trough." Graham's character, meanwhile, is getting married, and this brings about the predictable anxieties and misgivings.

At a diner that serves the same function as the restaurant in "Seinfeld" and the coffeehouse in "Friends," Ringwald frets about complications that have developed in the nuptials. The ever-funny, ever-reliable Conchata Ferrell, as a wisecracky waitress, says to her, "You're worried about your friends, aren't you, honey? I'd be worried too except, one, I'm working, and two, I don't give a rat's ass."

Unfortunately, for all Ringwald's appeal, many a viewer may feel the same way.