He’s Rolling Over, But Not With Laughter

NBC is drawing flak from its former programming boss, from beyond the grave. In an interview published in November’s Esquire, conducted before his Aug. 27 death from Hodgkin’s disease, Brandon Tarkitoff panned the network’s new fall schedule.

“They’ve taken what they think is the secret sauce of ‘Friends’ - the triumph of incredible casting and some pretty decent writing - and what they’ve done is they’ve now applied it to every single comedy that comes out,” he said.

“There’s a lampshade on the head of every fifth character in all these shows. The promos just make me want to grab a Valium.”

So why does his successor, Warren Littlefield, still have a job? “You have to understand something about Warren,” Tarkitoff said. “He’s a cockroach. He’s going to survive nuclear war.”

Loose talk

Attorney Alan Dershowitz, on the power of the tube (in Total TV magazine): “The court of last resort is no longer the Supreme Court. It’s ‘Nightline.”’

Surely, you must remember Laverne

Penny Marshall turns 55 today.

And that’s the straight dish, from the dish

Among the revelations in new NBC sitcom star Jenny McCarthy’s just-published autobiography, “Jen-X”: She detests former “Baywatch” babe Pamela Lee because of some catty comments Lee made about her in Cannes; her chest is fake; she had childhood crushes on Mr. Rogers and Erik Estrada and she wet her bed until she was 7.

He scored quite well on his college boards

Fred Savage (“The Wonder Years”) is taking a break from his studies at Stanford to star in his own new NBC sitcom, “Working.” “I don’t know what else I would do,” he tells Entertainment Weekly. “I guess I’m good with a hammer. I could be a carpenter or something.”

She’s settled into a rather rotini existence

After walking away from both NBC’s “ER” and ABC’s “NYPD Blue,” Sherry Stringfield has decided fame isn’t important. “Why does anybody want to be famous?” she asks. “You know what’s important to me? Having lunch! Pasta! Seeing my friends! Is that so crazy?”

So, it hurt to see the sorry state of Grace

Comedian Brett Butler, whose “Grace Under Fire” sitcom is in limbo at ABC, returned to the stand-up stage at the world-famous Improv in L.A. - and bombed. “It was horrible,” a fellow comic told TV Guide. “She just wasn’t funny. It was painful to see.”

But in the U.S., it’s called the ‘Full Moonty’

The next big production number for Drew Carey and the rest of the dance-crazy cast of ABC’s “Drew Carey Show” is reportedly a routine in which they drop their trousers en masse, echoing the ending of the British film “The Full Monty.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 photos

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Compiled by staff writer Rick Bonino