TV Reviews : ‘Maid for Each Other’ Can’t Get Rid of the Mold

Tony-winner-cum-sit-com-refugees Dinah Manoff and Nell Carter play irritating opposites who (yawn) learn to like each other in the female buddy comedy “Maid for Each Other” (at 9 tonight on NBC, Channels 4, 36 and 39).

If the punny title recalls the already forgotten Ally Sheedy vehicle “Maid to Order,” well, so does the first part of the setup: Manoff (of “Empty Nest” fame) is a pampered, hapless Beverly Hillsian forced to find work as a maid--in this case, by the death of her overdrawn husband. Manoff’s reluctant, irascible employer is Carter (“Gimme a Break”), a pop crooner working on a comeback.

These two have barely begun to grate on each other when a skeleton pops up in the closet: the dead body of Garrett Morris, as Carter’s shady ex-husband. Together, the two wacky widows will elude the police in some high-speed-chase high jinks and find the killer, whose motives have to do with one of the burning crime issues of our day--record bootlegging!

As written, Carter’s and Manoff’s initially (understandably) antagonistic characters are at various points dim, selfish or snippy, sometimes simultaneously. So it’s testament to the actors’ chemistry and timing that they make the best lines crackle and the more insipid ones breeze by.

But the hoary plotting and slick villainy are right out of the “Charlie’s Angels” school of TV mystery. Game performances and a few passable one-liners can’t mop up all that’s moldy about “Maid.”