Shepherd deserves better than ‘Sherri’

Lifetime’s new series, which premieres tonight at 7 before settling into its regular 10 p.m. Tuesday time slot, is unimaginative down to its relentless laugh track and its sort-of-meta concept: the woman best known for tossing jokes and wearing fabulous boots on the panel of ABC’s “The View’’ here plays a much more down-and-out version of herself. “Sherri Robinson’’ is an actress who has found moderate success; she’s done guest spots on “Ugly Betty’’ and “30 Rock.’’ But she lacks a lucrative talk show gig, and instead pays the bills by working as a paralegal at a law firm.

There, she bonds with the requisite female co-workers - the sassy ethnic one (Tammy Townsend), the dumb blonde (Elizabeth Regen) - engaging in what feel like endless conversations in the break room. At home, she’s a newly-single mom, in the process of divorcing her husband, Kevin (Malcolm-Jamal Warner), who cheated on her with a 20-year-old worker at a sandwich shop.

“Screw me once, shame on you,’’ Sherri explains to her pals. “Screw a white girl, we done.’’

This is the tenor of most of the humor: men are the enemies, except when they want to date you. This being Lifetime, there’s a fair amount of time spent showing women supporting each other. Sherri’s stiff and nerdy boss at the law firm, the butt of many jokes about women who have cats, still gets invited out clubbing with the girls. Sherri even bonds with Kevin’s paramour, Paula, over the fact that . . . well, Paula thinks Sherri is great.

Sherri is likable, sassy, and self-deprecating, and as an example of a woman holding fast to her dignity, she’s a decent role model. But she doesn’t feel right in this forum, where what passes for dialogue is usually an excuse for Shepherd to perform mini-comic monologues. She can be funny at times, but the rest of the women generally are not. Regen’s character is especially tiresome, as she rambles about her flooziness in an overbearing Jersey accent.

The men, ironically, turn out to be better. Kevin actually seems three-dimensional: insensitive and contrite at once. James Avery, as Sherri’s father, seems more realistically supportive than any of her girlfriends. And in tonight’s premiere, Michael Boatman delivers some of the only truly funny bits as a pediatrician who nervously tries to flirt with Sherri. We wish him the best of luck; “Sherri’’ deserves happiness, as does Sherri Shepherd herself. But she also deserves a better show.

Joanna Weiss can be reached at weiss@globe.com. For more on TV, go to www.viewerdiscretion .net.