FALL TV: '30' rocks, but '20 Years' is from 1986

When NBC executives announced earlier this year that the network's fall schedule would include two new shows both based on the same idea -- backstage at a show much like “Saturday Night Live” -- critics asked, “What were they thinking?” Turns out, we should've been asking that question of another NBC show.

  “Twenty Good Years,” a perfectly serviceable but utterly forgettable sitcom that premieres at 7:30 CT Wednesday on KSHB (Channel 41), stars Jeffrey Tambor and John Lithgow as two friends in their fifties. They're determined to skip middle age and go right to their renaissance. Yes, they're gonna get motorcycles and new girlfriends and live life to the …

  Hey, you! Wake up! I see you nodding off there over your newspaper. It can't be my scintillating prose that's the problem - it's this DOA show. Oh, there are enough laughs, I suppose, especially when Lithgow starts hamming it up (in bikini briefs, no less). But why does this feel like a rerun? It's not just because Lithgow and Tambor are familiar TV faces, though that's part of it. It's that the premise is middle-aged. You could've done this show 20 good years ago. Oh, wait, somebody did: it's called “The Golden Girls.”

  “30 Rock,” on the other hand, bristles with newness. For starters, it's a show written by, produced by and starring a woman -- the same woman, actually, one Tina Fey, formerly head writer of “SNL.” Here she plays the head writer of “The Girlie Show,” a fictional sketch comedy program airing on the NBC network in a parallel universe. A universe where a GE executive named Jack (wonderfully and archly played by Alec Baldwin) suddenly appears one day as her boss.

  “I'm the new vice president of East Coast television and microwave programming,” Jack announces.

  “That makes it sound like you program microwave ovens,” says Tina.

  “I like you,” Jack says, studying her thoughtfully. “You have the boldness of a much younger woman.”

  Airing just before “Twenty Good Years” at 7 p.m. CT on KSHB, “30 Rock” seems to come from a different generation as its lead-out. No laugh track here, just a strong ensemble and quick, sure-footed pacing that make “30 Rock” a good, potentially great show. If “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” has been disappointing so far because it makes the real “SNL” seem hilarious by comparison, “30 Rock” leaves you wondering: Why wasn't Fey this funny when she was writing for that other show?