Television Reviews : ‘Day by Day’: Day-Care Humor Hits Prime Time

If sticky fingers could talk, they’d sound like “Day by Day,� NBC’s new preschooler-laden comedy about a family that opens a day-care center in its living room.

The series, created by Andy Borowitz and “Family Ties� originator Gary David Goldberg, debuts at 8:30 tonight on Channels 4, 36 and 39, then returns with different episodes at 8:30 p.m. Thursday and Sunday. The latter is its regular time slot in a spring tryout that at least temporarily dislodges “My Two Dads,� now tabbed as one of NBC’s “designated hitter� series.

Written by Borowitz, the “Day by Day� opener delivers some amusing moments, largely from C. B. Barnes as Ross Harper, 15-year-old son of day-care center operators Brian and Kate Harper (Doug Sheehan and Linda Kelsey). Barnes appears headed for as much comic focus as Michael Fox on “Family Ties.�

Giving up careers as a stockbroker and lawyer, respectively, Brian and Kate have begun professional day-caring to spend more time with their infant daughter. Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays Brian’s former colleague Eileen Swift and Courtney Thorne-Smith is Ross’ heartthrob Kristin Carlson, an assistant at the center.

Tonight’s story finds Ross doing something dumb and insensitive to impress Kristin. Meanwhile, all of the cutesy unfunny lines--the equivalent of running a fingernail across glass--go to the little kiddies, of which there are oodles. So many, in fact, that you can almost hear the thumping pulses of their stage mothers in unison, as they watch from the wings.

All right, you can’t have a day-care series without kids. But you can have one minus the ear-splitting laughter from the studio audience (sweetened or unsweetened) that overwhelms even the straight lines on “Day by Day.� Tone that down and this could become a series to enjoy without earplugs.