Old pros with even older material

BY VERNE GAY | Newsday Staff Writer

October 11, 2006

John Lithgow and Jeffrey Tambor star in a plodding, unfunny sitcom. (NBC Photo)

There's a hard lesson to be learned from "Twenty Good Years," which - by the way - should be self-evident. Great stars do not a great show make. Great stars need good material and only then whatever magic they have in demonstrable abundance should (ideally) come tumbling forth.

Neither Jeffrey Tambor nor John Lithgow gets the requisite material in "Twenty Good Years." Ergo: Major disappointment. This show is so creaky you can almost hear the groans from where you sit. It is so ancient - in approach, tone, style and energy - that you can almost see the dust bunnies tumble across the set.

"Twenty Good Years" stars Lithgow as Dr. John Mason, a divorced New York surgeon who's completely full of himself and who belatedly realizes (after he's forced into semiretirement) that there's a big, exciting world out there. His close buddy from childhood is Jeffrey Pyne (Tambor), a clinically overcautious judge and widower who can't even make up his mind about whether he should get remarried to Gina (Judith Light, another pro slumming it here). Mason tells Jeff they've only got 20 good years left, and it's time to move on. "Your wife was a beautiful rose," Mason says, "but there are other flowers ..."

Says Pyne: "I'm not like you. I don't think with my watering can."

Let's give "Twenty" benefit of the doubt, though. "30 Rock," which precedes it on Wednesday nights, got better by the second episode. Could "Twenty Good Years" be a late bloomer, too? One can only hope.

TWENTY GOOD YEARS has a solid cast but after that, all bets are off. Sitcom debuts tonight at 8:30 on NBC/4.