Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton, who co-starred in Fox’s Back to You for its solitary season, are each back in their own separate sitcoms, both of which feature a major “but…” factor.

Kelsey Grammer and legendary sitcom director James Burrows are back with Hank… but the laugh track almost drowns out the jokes (too bad it doesn’t succeed, because the jokes are terrible) and the set-up is straight from Green Acres. Fired from his job, Hank (Grammer) moves his family from New York back to Virginia, where he remains a fish out of water, both in the suburban setting and amid the family he spent years ignoring for the office. Perhaps sensing the weakness of the premise, Grammer cranks his pomposity up to almost blinding levels, making it impossible to react to his character’s financial straits with anything less than malicious glee. The only time we feel sorry for Hank is when he has to deal with his dreadful children, a moody teenage girl (the terrible Jordan Hinson) and a Yoda-obsessed son (Nathan Gamble). Grammer (and audiences) deserve better. Hell, Jenna Elfman’s sitcom is more interesting than Hank.

As for The Middle, Patricia Heaton presides over a sitcom about Midwesterners that is saved by the bone-deep weirdness of its characters… but while The Middle lacks Hank’s intrusive laugh track, we’re stuck with Heaton’s seemingly endless narration. Stranded somewhere between the smug chirping of the narration in Desperate Housewives and the rueful charm of Burn Notice’s voiceovers, Heaton can’t overcome its lack of necessity.

At least The Middle’s children are so bizarre they’re interesting. Oldest son Axl (Charlie McDermott) strips down to his boxers as soon as he walks in the front door; middle child Sue (Eden Sher) is so awkward that even her parents are put off by her; and youngest son Brick (Atticus Shaffer) considers his backpack his best friend.

Where the show falters most is in its depiction of Middle Americans as junk food eating, TV-obsessed sloths. The picture rings true (I never ate a dinner with my family when the TV wasn’t on), but the economic struggles that Frankie has to suffer hit a little too close to home to be entirely amusing. But if I had to watch a show about a bizarre family on Wednesday nights, I’d stick with The New Adventures of Old Christine on CBS. At least Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Christine isn’t the sad sack that Heaton has made Frankie into.

Photo by Adam Larkey/ABC.