Dial File: Making a 'Payne'-ful comeback

We begin, mi amigos, with a mea culpa: I loved a loser.

(No, this isn't about my love life, wisenheimer.)

Last summer, I pegged Nathan Lane's "Encore! Encore!" as the fall's most promising new series. ... OK, so it wasn't Touched by an Angel. It had no Friends. It could have been stuffed in Veronica's Closet. It should have been Diagnosed: Murder.

Hey, Just Shoot Me, whydoncha!

And technically, "Encore! Encore!" was the most promising new series -- but a promise and $89.35 will get you in to see Siegfried & Roy, and their outfits are funnier.

Undaunted -- well, actually bloodied, cowering and whimpering -- I move on to my midseason pick: CBS' "Payne," an Americanized "Fawlty Towers," starring the Americanized John Cleese -- John Larroquette. Royal "Payne" (yes, that's the character's full name and no, I won't add the obvious anatomical reference, but, if you must, please feel free) debuts March 15.

I haven't seen one scene from the "Payne" pilot -- nor had I glimpsed any of Lane's ill-fated flop when I elevated "Encore! Encore!" to The-Second- Coming-of-"Frasier" status. Again, this is based on promise -- a concept as concrete as nailing Jell-O to a tree. But here goes:

Attempting to duplicate the Brit cult classic's door-slamming daffiness, ex-"Night Court" jester Larroquette plays a California hotel's pompous proprietor, based on Cleese's Basil Fawlty. No one can outclass Cleese, but Larroquette's a better bet than Beatrice Arthur, who headlined "Amanda's," ABC's feeble "Fawlty" clone in 1983.

On its own love-it-or-loathe-it terms, "Night Court" was one of TV's funniest unsung sitcoms and -- although it was built around supposedly subversive Harry Anderson -- Larroquette was its bawdy, bodacious, genuinely subversive soul. It wasn't for nothing that he snatched a fistful of Emmys as hyper-horny, super-sleazy Dan Fielding, combining pitch-perfect timing, brazen buffoonery and raunchy, pedal-to-the-metal relish into a comic speedball.

For his movie madness, try "Blind Date," the Bruce Willis/Kim Basinger flick that was stolen -- a heist at Fort Knox is more like it -- by Larroquette as a needy, nerdy weasel with a screw (and a bucket of bolts) loose.

The guy is God's gift to goofballs. And the gift was wantonly wasted in his first star-driven sitcom, the darkly almost-comic "John Larroquette Show." In that well-meaning misfire, Larroquette, as a recovering alcoholic/night bus station manager, was the sane anchor on a ship of fools. A complete miscast of a magnificent misanthrope. Think: Groucho switching roles with Margaret Dumont.

Conversely, "Payne" boomerangs him back into the realm of "Night Court"-style nuttiness. Like the screwball "Soap" before it, "Night Court" was deliriously demented burlesque, one of those rare shows that understood a sitcom's inherent un-realism and exploited it by going giddily, gloriously over the top.

And now Larroquette, its Patron Saint of Silliness, steps into the clown shoes of Cleese, the Minister of Silly Walks, for some Serious Slapstick Schtick. We can only imagine Cleese offering Larroquette this pearl of burlesque wisdom: Walk this way.

Yeah, we know: If you could walk that way, you wouldn't need the talcum powder.

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