Men of a Certain Age

Awhile back, I pointed out that I thought Ray Romano had done a good job in the small independent film "Eulogy." In the past month or two, his talent for playing other types of characters, a shade different than the version of himself he played on "Everybody Loves Raymond," has come through on the TNT series, "Men of A Certain Age."

On this show, Romano, as actor and producer, mines comedy out of a different set of foibles -- those of a divorced forty-something and his two closest friends -- an out-of-work actor played by Scott Bakula and struggling husband and father played by Andre Braugher. Bakula's skirt-chaser is the diametric opposite of his best known role from the 1980s sci-fi show "Quantum Leap," and Braugher, too, plays someone different from his usual more kinetic detective and professional characters.

They provide unexpected good counterpoint to Romano's portrayal of his character's own struggles as a divorced dad -- shaping a whole episode recently around the re-telling of his first serious post-divorce date, interspersed as longer flashbacks between brief banter with Bakula and Braugher interrupting the re-telling. Imagine the banter of diner scenes from Tarantino movies, delivered by Tarantino-caliber actors, who know the right places to pause in delivering a line for utmost comic effect. That's what I'm seeing, week in and week out, on this show.