'Knights' to the rescue!

This week sees the debut of two TV series each starring one half of the power couple of Courteney Cox and David Arquette. But as so often happens in television, they are upstaged by a bunch of no-names.

  Remember how Ray Liotta was going to spice up prime time as a high-class thief? Or Taye Diggs was going to make us forget about “Lost”? And yet, they are gone from prime time, while the fresh young faces in “Heroes” are the biggest sensation of the fall TV season.

  And now, from heroes to zeroes: Meet “The Knights of Prosperity,” a motley crew of blue-collar crooks who think they can break into rock superstar Mick Jagger's Central Park West apartment. What they lack in sophistication, they make up for in sheer ineptitude. And yet, these “Knights” may well steal something this winter … your hearts.

  OK, that line even made me cringe. But said just the right way, it could be a line from “Knights of Prosperity,” a show that won over my audience this summer at the “Watch the Pilots with Aaron” event.

  A goofy action comedy that sends up “Ocean's Eleven” and all those robbery shows that came and went last year, “Knights” succeeds where others fail. That's because its creators -- two veteran producers from David Letterman's Worldwide Pants shop -- struck exactly the right tone, chose the right palette, and made great casting calls. You will regret tuning in even a minute late for the premiere, which airs at 8 tonight on KMBC-9. You will not, however, regret switching away from “In Case of Emergency,” the Arquette vehicle which begins right after “Knights.”

  Donal Logue plays the show's lovable loser Eugene Gurkin. A janitor whose life matches his joyless and shabby apartment in Queens, he is stuck in the 1980s. Loni Anderson adorns his wall and his radio blares the music of supergroup Boston as they ironically extol a time when, surely, Eugene Gurkin's life held more promise.

  One day, after receiving several grim reminders of how much his life stinks (literally, given his job), Eugene hatches a plan. Swiftly he assembles a group of his fellow bottom-dwellers and tells them the promised land lies beyond the locked doors of the Rolling Stones frontman's penthouse.

  “I don't get it,” says Gary, a cabdriver from India after hearing the plan. “Why Mick Jagger? Why not some other celebrity like Alex Trebek? Or Willem Dafoe? Or James van der Beek? Or Jeff Conaway?”

  “Who?” asks Eugene's friend Squatch.

  Pulling the stogie out of his mouth, Rockefeller Butts, a security guard of tremendous girth and few words, says simply, “Kenickie.” (From "Grease." Look it up on the Internet, like I did.)

  What makes this and other scenes so delightful are the actors' voices. If “Knights” were a cartoon series instead of live-action, you could cast the same people in it: Maz Jobrani as the Punjabi, Lenny Venito as the Jersey guy and Kevin Michael Richardson as Rockefeller, whose voice is pure Barry White butter. The fact that these are all typecasts from a less politically correct era is part of the joke. Indeed, “Knights” adheres to a retro-uncool feel not unlike “The Fugitive Guy,” a beloved running skit that featured Chris Elliott on the old Letterman show.

  Throw in a Colombian hottie (Sofia Vergara, who actually is from Colombia) and an intern (Josh Grisetti) and you have a gang that I predict will be guilty … of making you laugh out loud.

  And then, the comedown, “In Case of Emergency.” Clearly ABC wanted this as a companion piece to “Knights,” and that's a nice compliment to “Knights,” but “Emergency” is not a worthy complement.

  Another show filled with nostalgic '80s touches, it stars Arquette (whose wife's show, “Dirt,” debuted Tuesday on FX), Greg Germann (from “Ally McBeal” and “Eureka”), Jonathan Silverman and Kelly Hu as high school classmates whose paths re-intersect 20 years later, as they discover life didn't turn out for each of them as they'd hoped.

  Sadly, the same can be said of this show. It's not well cast (sorry, but Germann cannot pull off the farce he's asked to do here). It's not well written (poor Arquette is given lines better suited to Jim Belushi). Worst of all, it so closely resembles another ABC comedy from this season, “Help Me Help You,” starring Ted Danson as a shrink, that it makes me wish that show were still on the air. Now, Ted Danson -- there's a TV star.