NBC’s Kath & Kim will premiere tonight at 8:30 pm EST. And though the new series featuring Selma Blair and Molly Shannon (a comedy duo who should be perfect together) is being touted as a “sitcom following a dysfunctional mother-daughter duo and their adventures in middle-class suburbia,” the reviewers are taking a decidedly less lighthearted stance. The Boston Herald called the series a “problem child,” while zap2it said the first two episodes were “pretty laugh-free.” This is not the sort of response a comedy featuring two such gifted actresses should receive.

The series was a huge hit in Australia, which pretty well guaranteed it would find a home on American shores eventually. NBC picked up the remake baton and cast Blair as Shannon’s spoiled, thick-as-a-brick daughter (though the two are actually separated by only eight years in age). Molly Shannon plays Kath, spandex-wearing and man-hunting, to Blair’s Kim, a celebrity-obsessed, would-be trophy wife.