Over-the-top "South Beach" and another "crumby" sitcom

Trendy cocktails, like television shows, derive from classic recipes that often get increasingly silly. A martini becomes an appletini becomes a badgertini and so on.

The midseason series "South Beach" and "Crumbs" represent TV's badgertini stage — several degrees removed from their original inspirations, and not as tasty.

UPN's "South Beach," airing from 8 to 10 tonight, feels very déja vu. It tries to do with Miami what "The O.C." did with Orange County, which was trying to do what "Beverly Hills 90210" did with Beverly Hills. Keep going back and you re-encounter "Miami Vice."

ABC's "Crumbs" debuts at 9:30 Thursday. It builds on an overload of dysfunctional family sitcoms epitomized most recently by the superior "Arrested Development."*

"South Beach" and "Crumbs" arrive during the network re-adjustment period, when schedules shift, new shows are tested and rivals gird for February sweeps.

At UPN, that meant finding a successor to the hit reality series "America's Next Top Model."

The answer seems to have been more models. Yet the beauties of "South Beach" are thinner in every way than their real-life predecessors, relegated to booty wallpaper in a lackluster buddy adventure.

"South Beach" has an exponential feel, as if it were striving to out-do "The O.C." through sheer numbers and exaggeration.

Instead of one working-class boy, we get two: Matt (Marcus Columa) and Vince (Chris Johnson). Brooklyn, N.Y., has replaced Chino, Calif., as the hellish place to escape. Even the road traveled is longer, with Matt and Vince moving not just to another county, but to an entirely different state and climate.

Once there, they are drawn into tonight's highly disjointed and overlong intrigue filled with nightclubs, gangstas and a paint-by-the-numbers soundtrack.

None of it is persuasive. The dialogue's awful, ranging from clichés ("I don't want to work in my uncle's restaurant the rest of my life") to quotations ("First you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the women") to product placements ("Anybody got a Red Bull?").

A few good performers are buried in the sand. Vanessa Williams as a powerful hotel/club owner and Giancarlo Esposito as a shady businessman make brief impressions before yielding to a passel of unmemorable twentysomethings.

"Crumbs," on the other hand, embraces veteran talent. That includes Jane Curtin and Fred Savage, whose relative youth is offset by his many "Wonder Years."

They co-star as mother and son in a comedy where everyone has something wrong. Mitch (Savage) is a gay screenplay author who hit writer's block after penning a movie about his dead brother. Curtin's character is being released from a psychiatric clinic after trying to run over her unfaithful husband (William Devane).

That's promising. But "Crumbs," which also features Eddie McClintock as Mitch's competitive, womanizing older brother, doesn't know what to do with these scenarios.

It lacks the guts for dark humor and instead timorously lightens up with traditional sitcom trappings — heavy punch lines, broad reactions and an irritating laugh track. The show is formulaic in other ways, too. Why must a gay male character so often be "balanced" by a philandering heterosexual, as if to prove queerness isn't catching?

The casting also is off, despite the abundant talent. Savage doesn't have enough mock gravitas to pull humor from the role of beleaguered problem solver. Curtin radiates too much sanity. Crafty, yes — crazy, no. And Devane tries way too hard.

The series will get a boost from "Dancing With the Stars," which airs from 8 to 9:30. Even so, "Crumbs" may have to live with its name by settling for the audience leavings of "CSI," "The Office" and "The O.C.," which moves to 9 p.m. starting Thursday.

*No update as of this writing on rumors that Showtime or ABC may be interested in picking up "Arrested Development." All the parties are keeping mum.

Kay McFadden: kmcfadden@seattletimes.com