If Fox's new sitcom "Sons of Tucson" were a movie, it would star Jack Black at his most annoying and likely bomb at the box office.
As it stands, "Sons" is a horrible domestic comedy, only it screens on television and stars a Jack Black wannabe and three "lovable" kids who wink to the camera when the need arises.
At least we don't have to pay $7.50 to be disappointed.
"Sons of Tucson" involves a chubby slacker named Ron Snuffkin ("Reaper's" Tyler Labine) who works at a sporting-goods store and lives out of his car.
In the pilot, which airs Sunday at 8:30 p.m. on KSTU Channel 13, Snuffkin is recruited by three mischievous children living on their own. Their father was a banker now in prison for fraud who has left his kids to fend for themselves in an Arizona suburban home.
To stay in the house, the kids need someone to play dad for things like school meetings. So they hire Snuffkin, and in theory, that leads to hilarity.
But it never does, and Labine tries his best to impersonate Black, but to no avail.
The three kids are mostly a bore, as are the situations, and the result is a half-hour better suited for washing the Sunday dishes.
"Justified" » One of crime writer Elmore Leonard's continuing characters, a U.S. marshal who is seemingly time-warped from the Old West, comes to television in this new FX drama. "Justified" only partially succeeds as a new crime-of-the-week thriller.
"Justified," which debuts March 16 at 11 p.m. on FX, stars Timothy Olyphant ("Damages") as Rayland Givens, a maverick federal officer who is transferred to the Kentucky office after a questionable shooting in Miami in which he killed a gun runner. Kentucky was where Givens grew up. When he returns, he immediately confronts bad guys from his hometown. In the pilot, he must deal with a neo-Nazi racist who also used to be an old friend and coal-mine co-worker.
Overall, it's standard legal-procedural drama, where the marshal has to deal with a new crime and brand of criminal every week.
But these kinds of one-hour series usually fare better on cable, where creators are able to shape a more interesting character around all the usual gunplay and handcuffing -- think "Psych," "Monk" or "Damages."
Givens, sporting a Stetson and cowboy boots, is a likable throwback to the Western heroes of yesteryear. Fans of Leonard's writing (he wrote the books that begat "Get Shorty" and "Out of Sight" and serves as an executive producer here) may wish his hard-bitten dialogue were more evident in this TV adaptation.
