If you can't beat Fox's "Ally McBeal," clone her. 
   That's apparently NBC's approach to reversing its Monday misfortunes, and the result is the atrocious "First Years" (Mondays, 9-10 p.m. ET, beginning tonight).
     Think "McBeal" times five, and you have this new series pegged. An attractive but quirky quintet of recent law school graduates slave away at a white-shoe firm in San Francisco. 
   If the strain of working together at the bottom rung of the totem pole isn't enough, they are all romantically involved with each other except for the fifth guy, the obligatory homosexual. Four of them share a house, too, and watching them file in and out of home and office together seems about as realistic as when "The Monkees" did the same.
     NBC declared ages ago that it was through with the overused formula of twittering twentysomethings in an urban setting. But if the cast of "Friends" were given law degrees and lobotomies, the result would be "Years."
    As a "McBeal" rip-off, "Years" is of course a dramedy. But in trying to go both ways, the series strikes a very awkward balance that "McBeal" manages more nimbly. One minute, an imprisoned black woman fights to recover the baby she unknowingly gave up for adoption to a white couple; the next, a lawyer serves a summons to a doctor in a restaurant by feigning choking. 
   The story lines veer between melodrama and humor as gracefully as a drunk driver on an open highway.
     Any series stealing from "McBeal" also has to have its fair share of sex. "Years" delivers. 
   One promiscuous lawyer can't find her underwear as she races from a one-night stand to work. Wearing a miniskirt she could have borrowed from the "McBeal" wardrobe collection (and no actual lawyer would ever be caught dead wearing on the job), she sits through a meeting with her legs crossed tighter than a pretzel. But instead of coming across as risqué humor, the scene feels like a calculated play to inject a frisson of sexuality into the show.
     Cast-wise, it's a bland bunch. 
    The biggest name on board is movie actress Samantha Manthis, who plays said promiscuous lawyer. Her boyfriend/lawyer is Ken Marino, who may be remembered from the NBC sitcom "Men Behaving Badly." 
   Seen here in a semi-dramatic role, Marino can take some getting used to for those who also remember him as a member of MTV's wacky comedy troupe "The State," where his hilarious recurring skit featured him prancing around holding billiard balls and repeating, "I want to dip my balls in it!"
     How any legal series can assemble a cast with no memorable characters is especially galling, coming on the heels of "McBeal," where creator David E. Kelley dares to make his players downright unlikable if that's what it takes to grab the audience.
     "Years" is intensely boring, which won't help it in one of the toughest time slots in primetime. If "McBeal" doesn't finish it off, CBS's "Everybody Loves Raymond" will.
     In a strange way, the scheduling of "Years" seems smart given how Monday has buried some top-notch fare over the past two seasons like "Deadline" and "Freaks & Geeks." Maybe the rationale is if quality drama can't work on Mondays, try dopey pap.
     Credit that decision to new NBC entertainment president Jeff Zucker, who certainly won't bolster his reputation with "Years."
   Then again, that's the beauty of a midseason series to an incoming programming chief.
    If it flops, you blame it on the outgoing boss who developed it. If it sticks, you plug your own scheduling prowess.

-Andrew Wallenstein is the television critic for Media Life.

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