TV Reviews : Carol Burnett’s Comedy Anthology Bows on NBC

“Carol & Company” is more mystery than comedy, the mystery being why she decided to do this series in the first place.

Before giving it a regular time slot at 10 p.m. on April 14, NBC is first testing the waters with special previews of “Carol & Company” tonight and April 7 at 9:30 p.m. on Channels 4, 36 and 39.

This is a comedy anthology performed in front of a studio audience, with Burnett starring in a different sketch (it’s really more that than a teleplay) each week, supported by a regular company.

“Carol & Company” affirms that even someone as skilled at comedy as Burnett is only as good as her writers, and they let her down in the first two programs, which are dreadful. Tonight she plays a woman who hires a company from the Yellow Pages named Hit Parade Parties to murder her womanizing husband (Richard Kind). The hit man (Terry Kiser) turns out to be especially relentless.

Next week Burnett plays a transsexual, a former high school quarterback-turned-female who jolts her old classmates at their 25th reunion. The most shocked is the former man’s former girlfriend, a drunk played by Swoosie Kurtz.

Tonight’s program is bad enough in being merely unfunny. Next week’s is even worse, for in addition to being unfunny, it clumsily attempts to be poignant.

Although it’s hard measuring the abilities of a repertory company that’s given such little script support, everyone knows what Burnett can do. But she’s not given the chance to do it here. These are different times, and Burnett is an actress who apparently wants to pursue a different brand of comedy than “The Carol Burnett Show” that gave America such memorably funny sketches from 1967 to 1979 on CBS.

Just the same, when she’s out there now, you somehow wish Harvey Korman, Tim Conway and Vicki Lawrence were with her.