Superior Donuts

The flavor of Superior Donuts might be old-fashioned--but a baker’s dozen of the sitcom might do the trick.

The Superior Donuts recipe is as old as doughnuts--or Cheers, to which it's far from ready to be compared, but it's also just topical enough to feel fresh.

It doesn’t always work, but it has the potential to break through its own built-in limitations.

Superior Donuts may well get stale in a hurry. But it’s on a network that somehow has kept the idiotic and likewise eatery-themed 2 Broke Girls on the air for an astonishing six seasons. And this one is better than that.

Superior Donuts is far from unwatchable. The snappy repartee between the crusty old white owner and his hustling young black employee may not quite draw the blood that the thematically similar "Chico and the Man" did, but it's not without its chuckles. And Fowler brings a madly exuberant charm to his role that marks him for future stardom.

A bigger problem for Superior Donuts is that its humor feels as tired as Arthur appears to be. The comedy is based on a play by the talented writer and actor Tracy Letts, but at times, the watered-down Donuts feels as though it was dredged up from a comedy vault that closed decades ago.

This is a formulaic, laugh-track comedy that wastes the talents of its actors--Katey Sagal is a sharp-tongued Chicago cop--who deliver inane, see-them-coming-from-a-mile-away one-liners.