“Do Not Disturb” (Wednesdays, Fox): Traditional laugh-track sitcom set in an upscale New York City hotel, where the employees sleep with each other and make saucy remarks about the guests. Niecy Nash, hilarious as Raineesha Williams on “Reno 911!,” feels very reined-in and restricted as the hotel’s H.R. supervisor; Jerry O’Connell (aka the fat kid from “Stand By Me”) is a little livelier as the hotel manager. There’s absolutely nothing special about the show, but the pilot episode made me chuckle a few times, and the characters are all vaguely likable. I would say it’s the kind of show you watch if you’re flipping channels and it happens to be on, or if it comes on right after something good — except that we live in the age of TiVo, and such primitive TV-watching methods are outdated.
“Privileged” (Tuesdays, CW): This is a surprisingly watchable lightweight dramedy about a Yale graduate and would-be writer who gets hired to tutor a pair of hellacious teenage billionaire girls. The tutor, played by Joanna Garcia (who apparently was on “Reba”), has a perky, quirky vibe that reminds me of Sarah Michelle Gellar, while the two girls — one secretly studious while the other aspires to be Paris Hilton — have more angles to their personalities than I would have expected. There’s also some backstory with the tutor, who grew up here in Palm Beach and has an estranged sister and father still in town. I actually laughed out loud several times during the pilot episode, which breezed by rather enjoyably, and I was interested in what would happen to the characters. I just might keep this one on the agenda.
“Hole in the Wall” (Tuesdays, Fox): The Americanization of popular Japanese game shows is all the rage right now, but while “Wipeout” is genuinely funny, “Hole in the Wall” is merely loud and shrill. Literally everything that is said by the hosts and the contestants is yelled rather than spoken. The game involves three-person teams standing in front of a wall that’s moving toward them. The wall has shapes cut out of it; the contestants have to position their bodies to fit the cut-outs, lest the wall smash into them and knock them into a pool of water. The actual game play is certainly entertaining, but it adds up to about five minutes of a 30-minute episode. The rest is ridiculous posturing and trash-talking between the teams (so embarrassing) and cheesy banter between the hosts (soooo embarrassing). Thanks to TiVo, you could watch the enjoyable parts and skip the rest, but why bother?
