‘Harriet’: Old Gag in Foxy Clothing

Anthony Tyler Quinn has some comic flair, and glints of clever writing occasionally do surface. But the cross-dressing premise for the new Fox comedy, “Ask Harriet,” is so creaky and antique that you can smell the must.

Fired from his job as ace columnist for the New York Dispatch, tenaciously male-supremacist, arrogantly misogynist Jack Cody (Quinn) gets a job at the same paper as a female advice columnist. That requires him to dress in drag and call himself Sylvia Coco to fool his colleagues, including snotty editor Melissa Peters (Lisa Waltz), who fired him and then rehired him thinking he was the female Sylvia.

It’s a lame idea that could work only if the female-impersonating Jack were surrounded by imbeciles who were unable to tell that this towering, masculine-looking freak of a woman, who speaks with a deep voice when excited, was really a man. What a lucky break that such is the case, the easily bamboozled set headed by old Melissa, who also is Jack’s former lover. Nope, even up close with Jack wearing his familiar male cologne, she just can’t tell. And even at a press conference, faced by a bunch of aggressive reporters, the disguise holds. This ranks with Lois Lane never figuring out Clark Kent.

The only ones in on the ruse are Jack’s best friend (Willie Garson) and a homeless guy who knows because . . . he’s a homeless guy. Meanwhile, Jack’s bra naturally is killing him and, as you might guess, this role reversal business is opening his eyes to the abuse foisted on females by macho types like (yikes) himself.

A coming episode has some sharp dialogue here and there, and Quinn has the timing to make it work. But when overplaying Ed Asner shows up as the Dispatch’s owner and falls hard for Jack as Sylvia, it’s time to run screaming from the room.

Well, yes, Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari dressed up as women in ABC’s old “Bosom Buddies,” but the only parts of that sitcom that worked were those in which they appeared as guys. And yes, Charles Durning flipped over cross-dressing Dustin Hoffman in “Tootsie,” as did Joe E. Brown over dolled-up Jack Lemmon in “Some Like It Hot.” But puleeeeeeze! A closer likeness to “Ask Harriet” is Michael Caine in “Dressed to Kill.”

* “Ask Harriet” premieres Sunday at 8:30 p.m. before moving to Thursdays at 8:30 p.m. on Fox (Channel 11).