Steve Harvey Overcomes His Lines; ‘Roger’ Doesn’t

Talk about unspectacular starts.

Rolling out the first new shows of the 1996-97 prime-time season is the 19-month-old WB network, which opens its “sneak peek week” Sunday with a pair of new comedy series: an uneven “The Steve Harvey Show” and an unbearable “Life With Roger.” Speaking as a viewer, this is living?

“The Steve Harvey Show’s” brightest resource by far is Harvey himself, star of ABC’s deceased “Me and the Boys” and that rare actor able to sometimes rise above defective material.

That’s his situation in his newest comedy when tightly gripped by a threadbare premise as Steve Hightower, a rhythm and blues musician and former bandleader taking a job teaching in an urban high school to pay the bills.

Naturally, his principal (Wendy Raquel Robinson) is a snip who picks on him. Naturally, his unruly students victimize him. Naturally, his unconventional ways win them over.

But not before he learns that, in addition to teaching music (the job he sought), he’ll also be teaching art and drama. And also not before he’s stunned by his class’ chaos, a noisy din of trash talk yielding little beyond an occasional funny response from the African American Hightower: “What am I doing wrong here? When Sidney Poitier had this gig, all the little white kids held hands and sang him a song.”

Although much of the premiere is nothing even to hum about, Harvey is so likable, his aptitude for self-effacement so strong and his delivery so fresh that he sometimes prevails just because of who he is, not because of what is written for him.

No such safety net exists for “Life With Roger,” which finds two guys with nothing in common becoming pals and roommates. Roger is Roger Hoyt (Mike O’Malley), who is cheerfully contemplating suicide by jumping off a bridge when he encounters his savior in Jason Clark (Maurice Godin).

You know it’s New York because, while buying Roger breakfast (which Roger gets all over his face), Jason gets his car towed away, then can’t get it back when the guy at the garage turns surly, then is robbed at an ATM machine, all on the same day that he’s supposed to get married to a miserable wretch who orders him around. Plus, Jason just can’t seem to get rid of that goofy guy Roger.

But wait, there’s more. When Jason’s best man can’t make it to the ceremony, all appears lost. There’s no one to replace him. Unless. Is it possible? Could it be that Roger. . . ? Duh.

Cutting through the rest of the brainy plot, we find Roger and Jason on the cutting edge of the implausible, about to take the plunge as roomies. But how could this happen? Jason is finicky, Roger is a slob. Jason is anal retentive, Roger is utterly chaotic. Why, it would never work.

But, if they did become roommates, is it just possible that living across the hall would be Jason’s neurotic and grating sister, Lanie (Hallie Todd), and that she would drop in all the time and be, well, neurotic and grating and as unfunny and unappealing as they are?

Nah, no way. Why, that would be as banal as a banal sitcom.

* “The Steve Harvey Show” premieres at 8:30 p.m. and “Life With Roger” premieres at 9:30 p.m. Sunday on WB (Channel 5).