ABC’s ‘Living Dolls’: Bad Role Model for Comedy

This is living?

Premiering at 8:30 tonight on Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42, ABC’s “Living Dolls” is the last of the fall season’s new comedies, and the least. If ever there was evidence of the creative cupboard being bare, this is it--a “Who’s the Boss?” spinoff that imitates “The Facts of Life.”

Why don’t they ever clone the good ones?

“Living Dolls” was created by Ross Brown (a former writer and supervising producer on “The Facts of Life”) and will regularly air at 8:30 p.m. Saturdays.

Four teen models live in New York with their agent Trish Carlin (Michael Learned) and her teen son Rick (David Moscow). There’s Emily the black one (Halle Berry) and Martha the naive one (Allison Elliott). There’s also Caroline the vain and self-centered one (Deborah Tucker) and Charlie the street-tough one (Leah Remini), a la Blair and Jo of “The Facts of Life.”

The Jo replica--tough exterior hides insecurities--is the center of the first two episodes. In tonight’s, Samantha Micelli (Alyssa Milano of “Who’s the Boss?”) stops in to do a story on the agency for her high school paper and finds her friend, Charlie, having difficulty adjusting to her new life as a model in training. Charlie walks out in disgust, but returns when she realizes she is loved.

On the second episode, Charlie gets into trouble by throwing a birthday party for herself after her mother rejects her. But everything turns out all right when she realizes she is loved.

The diversity is awesome.

Learned looks like she made a wrong turn and got lost in “Living Dolls” by mistake. Remini manages to shine a little, making you wonder what she would do with material written by adults.

“Living Dolls” is bad enough when it tries to be funny, even worse when it tries not to be funny. As for the latter, it doesn’t have to try.