Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here. Hercules is like me... he loves to tune in to first episodes of shows. He's the one who has been ranting and raving at me to tune in and check out NOW & AGAIN all season long. Many times, he's forced me to watch things that I've ended up enjoying all hell out of. In this case, he may be saving us all from that brain deadening experience that comes when you see a diabolically bad sitcom. If you ignore Herc's warnings, you do so at your own risk.

“Talk To Me” is, by any standard, bland, hackneyed, and dull-witted beyond reason.

A sitcom about a radio talk show host (Kyra Sedgwick) re-entering single life following the dissolution of a three-year relationship, it plays as if the makers of “Providence” finally saw Howard Stern’s “Private Parts” and thought it might make a spunky enough weekly sitcom -- if only they could just dial Stern’s “Sopranos”-level libido down to that of “Sabrina The Teenage Witch.”

Like Stern, Sedgwick’s character feuds with a conservative radio psychologist, enjoys a dismissive relationship with the station’s combative manager, and employs a crew of in-studio stooges. Unlike Stern, she and her cronies have nothing interesting, amusing, controversial or original to convey to their audience. The sitcom’s creators have obviously taken great pains to simulate spontaneous, free-wheeling on-air exchanges, and fail completely.

One of the show’s many problems is Sedgwick herself, an attractive presence in films like “Singles” and “Something to Talk About,” who seems utterly adrift in a live-audience sitcom environment; her stagey delivery overshoots every punchline as if she’s never worked in front of a camera before. (It probably doesn’t help that Sedgwick has to play opposite “Mad-TV’s” mistress of mugging Nicole Sullivan, cast here as Sedgwick’s impossibly dim sister.

Not that any of this hinders the turgid script by "Frasier” vet Suzanne Martin, whose tedious dialogue is consistently devoid of wit or innovation. Here’s the first post-title-card exchange, setting the tone for the entire series:

SEDGWICK: “What are you doing today?”

SULLIVAN: “I’m volunteering at the shelter. I’m in charge of the oatmeal today, and do I -- have a surprise -- for them! Last night I went door to door collecting other people’s raisins!”

(Sullivan hefts what looks like a plastic bag full of about 20 pounds of raisins)

SEDGWICK: “You didn’t tell them you were my sister, did you?”

SULLIVAN: “No, why?”

SEDGWICK: “No reason!”

It makes one wonder what other horrors now rattle about the development corridors over at Disney/ABC. Which pilot scripts could they possibly be turning down?

“Talk To Me” also makes one wonder why ABC isn’t more careful when it lucks into a gem of a series like “SportsNight,” the show “Talk to Me” pre-empts this evening.

“SportsNight” -- brainy, witty, fast-paced, focused and frequently laugh-out-loud funny -- is the antithesis of “Talk To Me.” It’s written most weeks by Aaron Sorkin, who authored screenplays for two wonderful, seminal movies -- “An American President” and “A Few Good Men” -- as well as every episode of “The West Wing,” a colossal hit for NBC and probably the best-reviewed hour on television at the moment.

But unlike “The West Wing,” “SportsNight” has been sandwiched into a timeslot I wouldn’t give a monkey on a rock. “SportsNight” has had to follow the underwhelming and incompatible “Dharma and Greg” and then go up against the muscular likes of “Just Shoot Me,” “Angel,” “Party of Five,” and “60 Minutes II.”

Not that anyone asked, but if I were programming ABC, I’d leave “Talk To Me” where it is and put “SportsNight” on at 8:30 p.m. Thursday -- just before “Millionaire” and opposite “Diagnosis Murder,” “Smackdown” and especially “Daddio” (the latest endurance test NBC has concocted to make our journey from “Friends” to “Frasier” as pleasure-free as possible).

And I’d leave it there.

We as a nation are starving for something decent to watch after “Friends.”

Call me crazy, but with “SportsNight” and “Millionaire” in tandem, ABC could make Thursday nights its own.

I implore you – do not oppose me!

I am -- Hercules!