"Fat Actress" innovative comedy? Fat chance

The premise behind Showtime's new comedy, "Fat Actress," is wonderful: A 50-something Hollywood star, already destined for the trash heap because of her age, is doomed to certain obscurity because of her weight. Why not make a show about Hollywood's obsession with thin women, especially if you have a very funny woman who can star in it?

Why not? Because "Fat Actress" isn't funny. It has funny moments, for sure, most of which involve Alley's go-for-broke physical comedy. But the script is so over the top that the jokes wear, shall we say, quite thin.

Not everyone agrees with me. The New York Times calls the show "shocking and very funny." It received the biggest audience of any Showtime premiere in years. But there was also a dramatic drop in audience numbers for the second segment. I tried to give the show a second chance but couldn't even get through the second episode. As much as I want to see Alley give Hollywood what it deserves for its treatment of women, I can sit through only so many booty jokes and "fat women want sex" gags.

Alley, who never had the starvation look, was always given grief by producers about her weight, in both "Cheers" and "Veronica's Closet." There is a long history of this kind of cruelty in Hollywood, the most famous case being a very young Judy Garland, who was not permitted to eat and was given amphetamines by MGM. Margaret Cho wound up in the hospital with collapsed kidneys when she lost 30 pounds in two weeks for "All-American Girl" (the producers also hired a coach to teach Cho how to be "more Asian").

"Fat Actress" airs on Sunday night. John Travolta made an appearance in the first episode, and Kelly Preston plays a sicko diet guru and "trainer" in the show. If Tom Cruise shows up, we can declare the whole thing a Scientology experiment gone wrong.