Weirdness Beams Through In Nbc’s ‘Newsradio’

Although NBC comedies dominate the ratings charts, the quality of the shows is far from uniform.

The best comedies dependably crank out first-rate entertainment. The dogs are best and easily forgotten.

Then there’s “NewsRadio” (Wednesdays at 9 on NBC), which is - in technical TV terms one weird show. Created by executive producer Paul Simms and directed by Tom Cherones, “NewsRadio” focuses on the peculiar people at WNYX, a fictional all-news radio station in New York.

Although ensemble sitcoms traditionally include at least one sane character for stability and the perspective of normalcy, on “NewsRadio” everybody’s nuts.

That includes news director Dave Nelson (played by Dave Foley), a recent Wisconsin transplant. Any claims Nelson may have to sanity went right out the window last week when he confronted the demon who stole two whole years of his highschool life: the Stargate Defender arcade game.

The guaranteed laugh-getter of the bunch clearly is Vicki Lewis, who plays Nelson’s secretary, Beth, a gum-chewing pheromone machine whose maturation appears to have been arrested somewhere between the toddler years and adolescence. Careful viewers may have noticed her in the background of a scene a couple of weeks ago licking empty ice-cube trays.

Phil Hartman, Stephen Root and Andy Dick aren’t far behind her. Hartman plays Bill McNeal, a news anchor who sounds smooth and authoritative on the air but who, off the air, is a preening, posturing and hopelessly ignorant manipulator. Root is station owner Jimmy James, a man whose wealth allows his bizarre sense of reality to go unchallenged.

And Dick plays Matthew, a fearful geek whose ability to function at all in the world is miraculous.

The closest to normal “NewsRadio” ever comes is assistant news director Lisa Miller (Maura Tierney), but her insecurities, not to mention her romance with Nelson, make her hold on that distinction tenuous at best.

Brassy news anchor Catherine Duke (Khandi Alexander) and station technician Joe (Joe Rogan) complete the WNYX family, which is not so much dysfunctional as it is just plain odd.

Very cleverly written, well staged and brilliantly cast, all that keeps “NewsRadio” off NBC’s A team is a sketch-comedy sensibility that limits character growth. It is, nevertheless, hilarious.