New ABC Sitcom: Surviving Suburbia

Bob Saget fans have something to look forward to tonight because his new sitcom, Surviving Suburbia, premieres on ABC in the 9:32pm ET, what-more-could-you-ask-for? post-Dancing with the Stars time slot.

For comparison, that’s the same time period that helped establish the first season of Samantha Who? as a hit, although the Christina Applegate comedy’s ratings have decreased substantially since it lost the top-rated lead-in.

Multi-camera Surviving Suburbia stars How I Met Your Mother and Full House’s Saget as suburb-dwelling married father of two Steve Patterson. His wife Anne is played by Men in Trees and Dead Like Me alumna Cynthia Stevenson.

The premise of the series is fairly standard. After two decades of marriage and a color-by-the-numbers existence in a nice suburban neighborhood, Steve still hasn’t turned into a true convert. As a result, his opinion of his lifestyle and surroundings is filled with negativity (but the network prefers the nicer-sounding term “cynical”) and sarcasm.

“Hero,” tonight’s premiere episode, finds Steve the cause of a major disaster when he reluctantly agrees to look after a neighbor’s (Dan Cortese, What I Like About You) house and starts a fire while on duty. Instead of coming clean, Steve pretends to have actually prevented the fire from doing worse damage, and he’s soon hailed as a hero.

I can deal with that plotline, but critical reception of the sitcom has been spotty at best, leaning heavily toward the “Thumbs Way Down in the Gutter” side. Continue below for the series promo, as well as Broadcasting & Cable’s 90-second review roundup for the show, which definitely is not encouraging. On the good side, the current forecast could turn out to be wrong.