“Men of a Certain Age,” which has its premiere Monday on TNT, has a coy, slightly French title, and one that is actually quite apt.
This soft-toned drama about three aging friends in Southern California stars Ray Romano (“Everybody Loves Raymond”), who also helped create it. It has the feel of a bittersweet French film of the 1970s and 1980s, the kind in which members of the Left Bank bourgeoisie grapple with midlife disappointment. (A classic of the genre was “Vincent, Fran?ois, Paul ... et les Autres,” from 1974, starring Yves Montand, Michel Piccoli and Serge Reggiani.)
“Men of a Certain Age” is not violent, exciting or fast paced, but the series has a quiet charm of its own: it is a believable, sharply observed portrait of ordinary men who, through all-too-common bad breaks and missteps, feel that they are backsliding.
The three lead actors, on the other hand, are on top of their games playing losers.
Mr. Romano is Joe, the owner of a party-supply store, with two kids and a gambling addiction that helped end his marriage to Sonia (Penelope Ann Miller). Andre Braugher (“Homicide: Life on the Street,” “Gideon’s Trumpet”) is Owen, happily married with three children but frustrated to be working as a salesman in his disapproving father’s car dealership. Scott Bakula ("Quantum Leap”) is Terry, an aging playboy and failed actor who works as a temp.
It’s not too depressing, because it is funny, but it’s not really a comedy.
David E. Kelley also tried to explore the nuances of male discontent in a 2003 CBS drama, “The Brotherhood of Poland, N.H.,” but that experiment failed. This series about men exploring their feelings landed on TNT, a cable network that has become a platform for heroines who prefer to keep their feelings to themselves. And that too is oddly appropriate.
TNT has become a kind of sanctuary where older performers can safely play against type: women are tough and tyrannical cops in shows like “The Closer” and “Saving Grace,” and now the stars of “Men of a Certain Age” are fragile, sensitive creators almost on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
It’s a show that would have no place on FX, which prefers to paint the masculine condition in macho extremes, where comedy is “The League,” a raunchy series about suburban men obsessed with fantasy football, and drama is “Sons of Anarchy,” about an outlaw motorcycle gang in Southern California. FX serves up portraits of men as they wish to be seen; TNT is showing men as they appear to the women who love them — but also leave them.
Mr. Romano is recognizable in this role. Joe is what would happen to sitcom Raymond if his wife left him, his parents died, and he started to hate his job.
Owen too is a sitcom dad # without a laugh track. He’s a grumpy father to kids who don’t listen and a cranky husband to a calm, competent, good-looking wife who loves him, sleep apnea and all. Owen has reason to be disgruntled: he is humiliated at work by his father but can’t afford to seek another job, so he aggravates his diabetes by drinking and overeating.
Both Owen and Joe still envy Terry’s lithe good looks and charm with the ladies. Waiting in the car for Terry to emerge with his latest young conquest, Owen asks Joe, “Would you say you hate him more now or back when we were in college?”
But Terry’s life is hardly enviable. His hair is thinning and so is his résumé. He has to force himself to go to cattle-call auditions and is often the oldest one in the waiting room.
Joe, Owen and Terry see each other almost every day, over breakfast in a diner or — to Owen’s chagrin — for a healthy hike around the reservoir, and skirt the only subject Joe really wants to talk about: why Sonia left him. His pals assure Joe that he is happier as a single man, free to chase girls and stay out late; he pretends to agree, though he mostly stays in his undershirt in his hotel room, scanning the television and placing bets. Joe won’t disclose his deep loneliness and depression to his two oldest friends and forms a bond with an eccentric bookie instead.
Television loves women in threes and fours; the heroines of “The Golden Girls,” “Sex and the City” and “Grey’s Anatomy” are best friends who share every detail of their lives, and meddle without qualms or invitation. These are three best friends who don’t tell one another everything, pals who help one another out by staying out of one another’s business.
“Men of a Certain Age” is # an intimate, womanly look at male bonding and better for its contradictions.
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