TV REVIEW : SCTV’s Andrea Martin in Showtime Special

In “Andrea Martin: Together Again,” Martin becomes the latest casualty of the uniquely flammable relationship between show business and the Peter Principle.

Where once, along with her SCTV confreres, she worked in a company that may have become the contemporary equivalent of Sid Caesar and “Your Show of Shows,” now she has been promoted into a stardom for which she is unprepared.

Martin is unquestionably one of the most gifted comedic actresses on the North American continent, but in this Showtime special at 10:30 tonight (which she co-wrote, with Mike Short), she falls into the amateur’s terrible trap of failing to distinguish between the funny and the stupid.

Martin plays a nightclub performer who has had a nervous breakdown and tries to make a comeback in a concert that looks like it’s been booked in a bus terminal waiting room. Edith Prickley (also played by Martin) is the bawdy saloon sympathizer to whom she tells her sad tale.

Catherine O’Hara and Martin Short make deft cameos, but “Together Again” is a conceptual mess that looks like it was produced for $40. It never holds together in a central point of view; it changes gags instead of teasing out the humor that comes of real people in plausible situations turned revealingly askew.

If you have any tapes or any sharp memories of Lily Tomlin’s satires, you’ll understand in a flash how dismal this effort is.

The program will also air Tuesday and July 14, 19, 24 and 30.