Rodriguez returns in ‘Not Dead Yet’
The second “Sixth Sense”-style sitcom to hit the network schedule in recent years, “Not Dead Yet” (8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., ABC, TV-14) sports a “cute” and memorable concept. And while sometimes they can be hard to sustain, it hasn’t hurt “Ghosts” any.
“Dead” takes its sweet time getting to the point. It starts out like your typical workplace comedy about a 30-something whose life is stuck in second gear. A oncepromising journalist, Nell (Gina Rodriquez, “Jane the Virgin”) upended her life to follow a boyfriend to London. After that relationship imploded, she returned home and to her old newspaper, where her former proteges had become management. They include Sam (Hannah Simone), the style editor, and Dennis (Josh Banday), quite proud to head the metro section. Lauren Ash (“Superstore”) is Lexi, the entitled daughter of the paper’s owner.
Nell seems genuinely miffed that Sam has since befriended Lexi, because they used to bond over how much they hated her. But Sam has moved on and become a working mother, while Nell is living with a persnickety roommate, Edward (Rick Glassman), who micromanages the thermostat and how long she keeps the refrigerator door open.
These many details emerge before we arrive at the show’s central hook, the kind of sitcom trick that used to be explained in the theme song. Nell has been consigned to the paper’s obituary beat, a job that comes to life, so to speak, when her subjects, the recently deceased, begin to manifest themselves to her, and only her.
In the pilot, Martin Mull plays a onceambitious pianist and composer known only for a bubble-gum jingle that people learned to loathe for its earworm quality. Over the course of the episode’s second half, he reveals insights about his life and encourages Nell to get her act together, because if the dead know anything, it’s that time is short — or at least limited.
All this sets up a “ghost of the week” format that will make room for guest stars, including Ed Begley Jr., Mo Collins, Deborah S. Craig, Telma Hopkins, Don Lake, Rhea Perlman, Paula Pell, Tony Plana, Brittany Snow and Julia Sweeney.
Like “Ghosts” and the more recent “Poker Face,” “Dead” offers oldfashioned, unchallenging TV comfort food. It says something that the talking-to-ghosts part of “Dead” seems more “real” or realistic than the office comedy part.
It’s also the second recent ABC series (after “Alaska Daily”) set in a newspaper office. People have been writing print journalism’s obituary for years, but it has yet to give up the ghost.
› Netflix streams the sports biography “Bill Russell: Legend,” a profile of the Boston Celtics star who died in 2022.