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Ellen Gray: 'Welcome' debuts during sweeps month

WELCOME TO THE CAPTAIN. 8:30 tonight, Channel 3. "I'm miserable out here. I can't write," complains screenwriter Josh Flug (Fran Kranz) in the opening minutes of CBS' "Welcome to the Captain."

WELCOME TO THE CAPTAIN. 8:30 tonight, Channel 3.

"I'm miserable out here. I can't write," complains screenwriter Josh Flug (Fran Kranz) in the opening minutes of CBS' "Welcome to the Captain."

Well, of course he can't write: Isn't he supposed to be on strike?

Fortunately for Josh, who's the central character in a so-so midseason comedy, no one else in L.A. has been writing, either, and so "Welcome to the Captain" gets to debut during sweeps, on the same night that Julia Louis-Dreyfus' "The New Adventures of Old Christine" (9:30 tonight, Channel 3) returns for a third season.

Of course, she has Blair Underwood (whose character's just as good-looking but a lot less obnoxious than the patient he's playing on HBO's "In Treatment"). Tonight, they're finally supposed to have the sex they've been putting off for two months (or even longer, since Season 2 ended a while ago).

Josh, we're told, won an Oscar for a short film five years ago but has since foundered professionally and personally.

Enter the denizens of El Capitan, a Hollywood apartment building into which he moves at the urging of a college buddy (Chris Klein). This colorful group includes a former prime-time soap actress played by Raquel Welch and an avuncular "Three's Company" writer played by Jeffrey Tambor.

There's a running gag in which a variety of years are sliced off Welch's character's age, and there's also a doorman (Al Madrigal) named Jesus who prefers the pronunciation some reserve for the Jesus.

Yes, they're all really colorful.

Plus, there's a so-cute-you-could-die aspiring acupuncturist named Hope (played by Joanna Garcia, the so-cute-you-could-die married daughter on "Reba"). Just being around her gives Josh pins and needles, or actually something slightly more embarrassing, which she'll be happy to describe.

The only thing they're all missing is a studio audience, "Welcome" having succumbed to the current craze for single-camera comedy, making it look a bit more sophisticated than it really is.

Kranz ("The TV Set") does look like a writer, for what it's worth. But if he's really as good as they say, he'd have written something better than this.

'31 Days' of relief

We may or may not get an Oscars ceremony with all the trimmings this month, but in announcing last week that there will be some sort of ceremony, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences wasn't just saying the show will go on: It was putting the emphasis where it belonged - on the movies.

That's where Turner Classic Movies places it, too, in its annual film festival, "31 Days of Oscar," which kicked off Friday and runs through March 2.

Whether or not the writers strike is settled in time to allow the usual red-carpet parade of actors making inane chitchat with overexcited TV reporters, we won't, at least, be deprived of TCM's marathon of films that have won or been nominated for Oscars.

Nothing on TV but Donald Trump and some pseudo-celebs? Waiting for "American Idol" to stop showcasing freaks? Just want a break from "reality"?

There's an Oscar-nominated movie waiting. Twenty-four hours a day.

Not every one looks as good in retrospect, of course, but that's the Oscars, too. Since 1929, people have been arguing about the relative merits of the films that did and didn't get nominated, and thanks to TCM, we still have plenty to talk about. *

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