Prometheus 6   

"Whoopi" is a daring impostor: a revival of Norman Lear-style social commentary dressed up as the kind of frisky, postfeminist sitcom so favored by NBC.

As Mavis Rae, a tart-tongued owner of a small, third-rate hotel in New York, Whoopi Goldberg uses post-Sept. 11 wisecracks and a multicultural cast to inform viewers about ethnic bias, racial profiling, the Bill of Rights and black men who date only white women.

Thanks in large part to Rita, a suburban white girl who talks, dresses and acts like a homegirl ("I mean, straight up, props to you," she coos into her cellphone), this show is more inventive than tonight's other new NBC sitcom, "Happy Family." "Whoopi" is certainly wittier than next week's pilot, "Coupling," a sexed-up "Friends."

But "Whoopi" is not what it most wants to be: an avatar of popular culture that could incite a conservative politician to deplore it, as Dan Quayle did to "Murphy Brown" in 1992, was he was vice president.

There are at least two reasons "Whoopi" is unlikely to meet its highest expectations (three, if one counts the likelihood that Vice President Dick Cheney has more on his to-do list).

Ms. Goldberg and her executive producers, a brain trust that includes the makers of "The Cosby Show" and "Roseanne," want to restore the moral authority of the sitcom when the Bunkers and the Huxtables were at their height, in those halcyon days before reality shows kidnapped the public's attention.

But reality TV alone didn't emasculate the sitcom. There is clever social satire elsewhere, from Comedy Central's "Daily Show With Jon Stewart" to youth-oriented sitcoms on UPN and WB. Even MTV's latest reality show, "Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica," which tracks the Beverly Hillbilly domesticity of Jessica Simpson and her bridegroom, Nick Lachey, can be viewed as an edifying video homily: no matter how rich and famous, pop stars at home are boring and irresolute about laundry.