This is one in a series of Media Life previews of those programs.


 
Name of show 
“Unhitched”
 
Timeslot 
Fox, Sunday 9:30 p.m.
 
Plot synopsis 
Executive-produced by Bobby and Peter Farrelly (“There’s Something About Mary,” “Dumb & Dumber”) “Unhitched” follows four newly single friends in their 30s living in Boston and trying to find love.
 
There’s Jack “Gator” Gately (Craig Bierko), the type of guy who thought he’d never be divorced. But since he is, he’ll go all-out to find “the one,” or in his case, “another one.”
 
Gator is joined by his best friends Tommy (Johnny Sneed) and Freddy (Shaun Majumder). Tommy’s the owner of a new microbrewery in town, while Freddy’s a surgeon who’s a whiz in the operating room but a real dud when it comes to women.
 
The last of the friends is Kate (“The Office’s” Rashida Jones), an attorney who handled her three friends’ divorces and lives next door to Gator. Though never married herself, Kate is just out of a seven-year engagement, and she throws herself back into the dating pool along with the boys.

A lot of the humor of "Unhitched" revolves around orangutans, and it's unlikely it will sail over anyone's head, orangutans included. Fox is promoting "Unhitched" as outrageous, which is a usually a dead giveaway for a weak series that turns to potty jokes to cover up its many failings. Think of "Married with Children" without the intellectual heft.
 
Outlook 
The real question with “Unhitched” is whether primetime is ready for the Farrelly brothers and their brand of gross-out humor.

But that said, “Unhitched” has a few things working in its favor, chiefly its berth on Fox's Sunday lineup, which has gained momentum this season, averaging a 5.3 among 18-49s, up 36 percent from last year, not including Super Bowl.

“The Simpsons," “King of the Hill" and “Family Guy” will all air original episodes Sunday night, and none has averaged less than a 3.5 rating among 18-49s this season.

It leads out of “Family Guy,” which is No. 16 so far this season among 18-49s with a 4.6 average rating, and it would seem an especially good fit, considering "Family Guy's" strong male skew. “Unhitched” is the sort of show guys would hang around to at least sample. 

Plus, “Unhitched” won't be facing any real tough competition. It airs against the second half of ABC’s “Oprah’s Big Give,” which will likely do well but with a very different audience, women. It was also to air against NBC’s “quarterlife” but that was canceled abruptly late yesterday after just one episode.
 
It also faces a repeat of “The Game” on CW and the second half of a “Cold Case” rerun on CBS, neither of which is likely to perform well.
 
The one small strike against “Unhitched” is that it airs at the tail end of an animated lineup, and Fox has yet to succeed at integrating a live-action comedy into that mix.

But even so, “Unhitched” should pull at least a 3.5 in 18-49s, and anything less would be seen as a disappointment.
 
The buzz 
While Fox’s Sunday nights have done well this season on the strength of animated fare, media people remember the days when the network also had success with live-action comedy on the night.
 
“They’ve done really well with animation, but if you go back to the beginning of Fox, they launched with things like ‘Married with Children,’” says one media researcher.

She says “Unhitched” should benefit from the weak Sunday 9:30 p.m. timeslot.
 
Another plus is the Farrelly name. The two also directed Sunday's premiere episode. “There should be high initial sampling, especially among Farrelly fans,” she says. 
 
What critics are saying 
“Now, after ‘The Loop,’ ‘The War at Home,’ ‘Stacked’ and ‘The Winner’ all failed like bad pickup lines, will the sibling groin-humor specialists be the ones to deliver a raunchy sitcom hit to Fox? It all depends, I guess. Will seeing Craig Bierko ass-attacked by his date’s pet baboon get a viewer like you to second base?” – Robert Abele, L.A. Weekly
 
“Although Fox’s promotion bills the show as ‘outrageous,’ the Farrellys also seem oddly shackled compared with even their lesser big-screen endeavors -- enough to make one pine for the genuinely poor taste of ‘Shallow Hal’ or ‘Me, Myself & Irene.’ – Brian Lowry, Variety
 
“Take a couple having sex, add an aroused orangutan, and you’ve got an opening scene worthy of a Farrelly Brothers film. That it’s in a network TV comedy, ‘Unhitched,’ might raise some eyebrows.” – Bill Keveney, USA Today