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The long and at-first puzzling title of my favorite TV comedy for 2008 tells it all. "The New Adventures of Old Christine" is about about a divorced working mom who must survive in her new situation. The highly-talented Julia Louis-Dreyfus portrays Christine brilliantly. The veteran actress brings her wry combination of humor and pathos to a story line what could easily dip into mawkishness. With her sparkling personality that was so endearing during her ten years in "Seinfeld", in every episode of "Christine", Julia earns the superstardom she so richly deserves. At the same time, she broke the Seinfeld "curse" of failed TV shows that has plagued other former Seinfeld cast members.

I found it difficult, as the first season of "Christine" aired three years ago, to understand why any husband could be so clueless as to leave bright, sexy wife and earth mother Christine. Even though he did it with the typical mid-life crisis excuse to shack up with a new bimbo of the same name, the "new Christine", it's almost beyond belief that he could do it to his faithful old Christine. Then, instead of sitting around feeling sorry for herself, she just gets on with solving her problems, as well as problems of everyone else.

Beyond star Julia's appeal and talent, the great writing of this sitcom gives TV a welcome relief from the tedious fare we must endure today. The boob tube is overloaded with Chicken Little newscasts, endless police series, bloody cage fighting, talent competitions of the untalented, and idiotically fake reality shows. "Christine" brings pleasantly to mind some of the simple charm of the two Bob Newhart series, "Seinfeld", "Everybody Loves Raymond", "The Dick Van Dyke Show", and maybe even where domestic sitcoms all began, "I Love Lucy."

Another endearing factor in this sitcom is that, unlike Robert Young in "Father Knows Best", Christine makes mistakes with her kids and just about everywhere else, and can't solve every problem within each 30-minute episode. Not only is Julia's Christine a very sympathetic character, she's also as down-to-earth human as the rest of today's parents who try too hard, but too often fail. The only difference is that Christine makes her sincerity, attempts and goofs into wonderful TV comedy viewing.

I hope new episodes of "The New Adventures of Old Christine" will be airing on prime time for at least as long as "Seinfeld" did in the 1990s, and hangs around in reruns indefinitely. Whatever happens, if Julia Lewis-Dreyfus is on TV in the future in any role, even selling aluminum siding on the Home Shopping Network, I and millions more of her fans will be sure to watch her.

Learn more about this author, Ted Sherman.
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