This teacher can be loquacious--oh yeah--but he's got a big heart, too. Danza, Northeast and A&E deserve credit for this series.

By using a celebrity as a Trojan horse, Teach offers an engaging and intimate look at just how complicated and difficult teaching can be at a large, urban public high school.

You feel for Danza, and the show forces you to think about how tough this job is for noncelebrity teachers.

What makes Teach: Tony Danza worth watching are the teenagers themselves and the glimpses of other teachers who make the place work. Danza, meanwhile, becomes an irritating, whirling, self-aggrandizing bundle of nerves.

It's the students that make Teach a sometimes interesting show. They drive the story's forward momentum as much as Mr. Danza does and quickly emerge as his co-stars in a program that touches on teacher quality, student apathy and the plight of urban public schools.

The opening episode of his new A&E reality show almost physically painful to watch. The good news is that if the viewer sticks it out, as Danza did, things will get better as the weeks roll along. They never get perfect. But he will eventually find his footing and win some props.

What's left, then, is Danza playing (and there's really the operative word) at being a teacher, with the show employing the customary musical cues and editing tricks to try to generate suspense about whether he can actually teach the kids to appreciate "Of Mice and Men."