Couch Potato: Two more ABC comedies debut

ABC’s Wednesday comedy block is full of familiar faces.

I’ve already reviewed Ed “Married With Children” O’Neill’s “Modern Family” (9 p.m.) and Courteney “Friends” Cox’s “Cougar Town” (9:30 p.m.). A quick recap, just in case: “Family” is hilariously funny and original; “Cougar Town,” well, not so much.

Two new sitcoms join them this week, and the results are similarly mixed.

“Hank,” which kicks off at 8 p.m., stars Kelsey Grammer as an entrepreneur who has to downsize and move his family — wife, Tilly, son, Henry and daughter, Maddie — from New York to a small Virginia town after being forced out of his high-powered CEO job.

Grammer’s patriarch is out of touch and can’t relate to his kids. He doesn’t know his daughter has a longtime boyfriend or why his young son talks like Yoda (or, as Hank calls him, the “Kung Fu Frog from ‘Star Wars’”).

If I had to describe the show in one word, it would be lame. Lame jokes, set to a lame laugh track with mostly lame deliveries from the actors.

The only bright spot comes from David Koechner as Hank’s bitter brother-in-law, who enjoys his recent misfortunes a little too much.

“If there’s anything I can do for you in your time of need and failure,” he says with a sly grin, “let me know.”

But even his shtick gets old after a while.

My advice? Skip it and instead start the night at 8:30 with “The Middle,” a much more entertaining family comedy that stars Patricia Heaton (“Everybody Loves Raymond”) as Frankie Heck, a harried wife and mother of three.

(Bonus: Neil Flynn, who spent eight seasons as The Janitor on “Scrubs,” costars as her matter-of-fact hubby, Mike.)

The series reminded me of “Roseanne” in the way it depicts a working-class family.

Frankie and Mike both hold down jobs — she as a car saleswoman, he as the manager of a local quarry — and struggle to find a balance between their work and home lives. Most dinners are of the fast food variety, consumed in front of the TV during reality shows like “Dancing With the Stars.”

And, refreshingly, their kids aren’t the typically precocious types we tend to see on sitcoms these days, much like Becky, Darlene and D.J. weren’t on “Roseanne.”

Teenager Axl only comes out of his room to “paw through our food and make sarcastic comments;” 13-year-old Sue is in what her parents worry is a permanent awkward phase; and the youngest, Brick, is just plain weird (hey, his father says it, not me).

“I just hope he’s weird enough that our insurance covers it,” Mike says after they’re called into Brick’s school for a meeting with teachers. Again.

The Hecks and their life in “the middle” are guaranteed to make you laugh.