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Review: 'Last Man' actually funny

Will Forte created and stars in the new Fox sitcom

Will Forte had me at the Cheez Whiz.

Six minutes into his terrific Fox sitcom, The Last Man on Earth - in which he plays, um, the last man left alive on Earth - Forte samples a $10,000 bottle of red wine with his bowl of SpaghettiOs.

Then he has a brainstorm (or a meltdown) and squirts a dollop of processed canned cheese into the glass and takes a nice long sip.

He deliberates for a while, then declares, "Not as good."

The Last Man on Earth premieres at 9 p.m. Sunday with a double episode.

Forte, best known for his long stint on Saturday Night Live, plays Phil Miller, a former office drone, who has survived a pandemic that wiped out the world's population.

Forte, who also created the series, delivers a virtuoso solo performance in the first episode's opening 15 minutes, which has Phil zigzagging across America in a failed search for other survivors. We watch as he sets up house in a grand mansion in Tucson, Ariz., which he decorates with a billion-dollars' worth of art he pilfered during his travels.

He's so lonely that he tries dating a store window mannequin.

And he talks to God.

"Hello, God. First of all, I'd like to apologize for all the recent masturbation," he says while sporting Hugh Hefner's red pajamas. "Actually, that's kind of on you. . . . If you could send some [women] or one my way."

Be careful for what you wish.

Phil gets a woman, all right. But Carol Pilbasian (Flight of the Concord's brilliant Kristen Schaal) isn't exactly a blessing.

She's a neurotic nitpicker. She's one of those people who corrects your grammar. Obsessively. Incessantly. And let's face it, Phil isn't the most articulate dude. He's also a messy slob, which drives poor Carol around the bend.

Salvation quickly turns into damnation as the world's only man and woman try to shack up. The Last Man on Earth is a rare creature - a sitcom that's actually funny.

Yet another 'CSI'

CBS's enduring CSI franchise already has colonized Las Vegas, New York, and Miami. With its fourth show, however, the network has claimed the entire country: It's gone federal.

Premiering at 10 p.m. Wednesday, CSI: Cyber is about an FBI unit led by psychologist-crime-fighter Avery Ryan (Patricia Arquette) that combats evildoers who use the information superhighway to victimize folk. And yes, it opens with another song by The Who, "I Can See for Miles."

CSI: Cyber is as dull, repetitive, and unimaginative as its sister shows and as facile when it comes to its definition of the nature of criminality. We do get less tech-porn - those music-video-styled sequences that make CSI lab work look like lovemaking. But we do have to look at an awful lot of computer screens.

The series isn't even about cyber crime, per se, but criminals who do a bit of hacking. Early episodes pit the team against kidnappers who hack into baby cams, an accident fetishist who assumes the controls of a roller coaster, and a killer who gets into a cab company's dispatching system.

It's good to see Arquette, who last Sunday won the supporting actress Oscar for Boyhood, lead another drama after the demise of Medium, but this material isn't worthy of her talents.

TV REVIEW

The Last Man on Earth

Premieres 9 p.m. Sunday on Fox29

CSI: Cyber

Premieres 10 p.m. Wednesday on CBS3

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