Martin Mull Takes ‘a Real Job’ as Lead in Network Sitcom

Martin Mull has temporarily deserted such off-beat pursuits as “The History of the White People in America” in order to appear in a network sitcom.

“I thought it was high time I took a real job,” Mull said in an interview. “I’d been having just too much fun all my life.”

After appearing in Norman Lear’s syndicated “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” and its spinoff, “Fernwood 2-Night,” as well as the “White People” spoofs on pay cable, Mull now stars in “His & Hers,” a sitcom to premiere on CBS Monday.

Mull plays Dr. Douglas Lambert, a divorced marriage counselor with two teen-age kids, who is remarried to Stephanie Faracy as Dr. Regina Hewitt, a never-before-wed marriage counselor.

He found the pilot script for the show funny, “and I thought it had some chance to grow and change and be even funnier and more adult and sophisticated.”

He feels unsure about the finished product--and with some reason.

The opening show has some very funny moments as it explores the infertility problems of its central characters, marriage counselors who have their own domestic problems.

At the infertility clinic, when he is given a specimen container, he just smirks with embarrassment and takes off for a private room saying, “I’ll just go in there and do whatever I’d do if I were in prison.”

Mull and Faracy are funny and their chemistry is good, and Blake Soper comes across as Mull’s teen-age boy who gives off the emotional warmth of wallboard. There also is Fluffy, a white cat who looks as if she inspired Don King’s hairdo.

“I’m not an animal hater,” said Mull, who during the first show drops the cat out the window several times, “but that cat. . . . It would not hit a mark, and we were down an hour trying to get this thing to stay on a chair. If I was supposed to have animosity toward that cat--it was not method acting.”