ANGST TV FALL SEASON LINEUP REFLECTS OUR AGE OF ANXIETY, SENSE OF UNEASE.

Byline: David Kronke Television Critic

CBS' upcoming series ``The Class'' begins with a fairly disastrous reunion of young adults who all attended third grade together.

At the conclusion of the first episode, one character, considering class photos, ruminates, ``I just kept looking at these kids, and they're all smiling and happy and hopeful. And I kept thinking, how many of these kids are happy today?''

He continues: ``How many of us are already stuck in bad jobs or lousy marriages; how many of us have already made that one big dumb choice that we'll never really recover from? Of all those smiling kids, how many of them are still smiling?''

And ``The Class'' is a sitcom.

It's scarcely the only new comedy to employ as its springboard characters who find themselves disillusioned with their life choices.

The state of the world has made it difficult for even comedy writers to put on a happy face.

``During the Depression, people would go to the movies to escape all of that, but now it's truly impossible to escape that,'' observes ``Class'' cast member Lizzy Caplan. ``And if you don't address it, there's no sense of escapism anymore. People really want to understand what's going on (today).''

In addition to ``The Class,'' four other upcoming network comedies, as well as one that recently debuted on cable, plumb the Zeitgeist to reflect upon the nation's general sense of anxiety:

Fox's ``Happy Hour'' looks at a similar group of young people whose personal and professional lives are in shambles.

The title comes from one character's embrace of the concept over a martini: ``This is happy hour. It's the time after something bad -- work, (a failed relationship) -- and before something good -- dinner, a new life.'' Presumably, the series will linger in that netherworld between gloom and a better tomorrow.

In ABC's ``Help Me Help You,'' Ted Danson puts the ``psycho'' in a psychotherapist who barely presides over a group-therapy session filled with disaffected neurotics. Like ``The Class,'' ``Help Me Help You'' finds comedy in a failed suicide attempt.

ABC Family's ``Three Moons Over Milford'' pushes the angst even further, focusing on the nervous residents of a small, eccentric New England town where the fate of the world hangs in the balance after the moon crumbles into three chunks, any of which could destroy the planet should they fall from their orbits.

Even something as deliriously silly as NBC's ``20 Good Years'' -- star John Lithgow at one point parades about in a Speedo -- begins with its principle characters, two 60-year-old men (Jeffrey Tambor is the other) sensing they've squandered their lives and must do all they can to embrace life to its fullest in the time they have remaining.

ABC's midseason series ``In Case of Emergency'' focuses on three school chums reunited years later in a hospital emergency room, all at the nadir of their lives.

New fall dramas, likewise, reflect a similar unease. CBS' ``Jericho,'' for example, is set after a nuclear conflagration.

But the convergence of such anxious comedies is noteworthy: Would we really be seeing this many fretfully funny shows if America were at peace and the economy felt healthy?

``If this show is embraced, one reason will be we're desperate for hope right now,'' says ``20 Good Years' '' Lithgow. ``We're desperate. We're desperate for comedy. It's very easy to be cynical about feel-good comedy, but nobody feels good right now. We hate our government -- even Republicans are beginning to hate our government -- and we hate what's happened to America's image in the world.''

``Given the general mood of our country, we require laughs about overcoming obstacles more than any other time in our past,'' agrees Jamie Denbo of ``Happy Hour.'' ``The mood of our country is so dark and so miserable, we have nothing to do but to overcome odds and face it with humor.''

Darlene Hunt, one of the stars of ``Help Me Help You,'' adds, ``Getting at what's really going on is a funny thing. The fact that this is one of the shows that along with others are sort of a little darker, maybe it is in the Zeitgeist and maybe people are responding to that truthfulness and that pathos and that comedy from pain. ... I do sense that something is changing in tone and style with sitcoms.''

``Three Moons Over Milford'' co-executive producer and director James Frawley admits his show is a response to the mess the world currently finds itself in. ``Absolutely: The combination of 9/11, global warming and George Bush is enough to drive anybody crazy.''

``Three Moons'' star Elizabeth McGovern agrees with a shrug: ``That's all you have to say.''

``The cast and I got together and we all acknowledged that that was what this was about,'' Frawley continues. ``We felt that that was in the atmosphere, but our primary responsibility was to entertain. To take the material, and even though those other things were going on, to work on it at a moment-to-moment basis and keeping it entertaining, alive, touching, funny, like life.''

But the current political situation isn't the only thing fueling these comedies. More personal, intimate travails inform them as well: A recent study found that Americans have fewer close friends than they did a mere 20 years ago. Simply put, the country's becoming a lonelier place.

``People are feeling more and more lost,'' observes ``Happy Hour's'' Beth Lacke. ``It has to do with everything from the current political climate to their own personal lives, trying to find love. I have so many friends on match.com, I can't even tell you.''

`I think in this era of antidepressants, there's this profound disappointment,'' adds ``The Class's'' Heather Goldenhersh. ``We have to fulfill these expectations. I know I'm overwhelmed by advertisements. `You need to be this, you need to be that!' You need to take a shower after all that. I've definitely run up against inflated expectations.''

Other societal milestones are marking comedy's reflective turn.

``Our show is specifically about two guys turning 60, and this is the year that the baby boomers turn 60,'' Lithgow notes. ``I turned 60 myself. I think (these shows are due) to a confluence of that fact, and the incredible defeatism and cynicism that's kicked in. This show is about the panic of growing old, and feeling good about that, not bad -- the strategies for overcoming that.''

These comic minds may have diagnosed our culture's woes, but can they prescribe a remedy?

``Happy Hour's'' Denbo, appropriately enough, offers with a laugh, ``The answer's always been to just start drinking.''

``Three Moons' '' McGovern says, ``It's what we have to do on a day-to-day basis today. We have to acknowledge that the world as we know it may cease to exist at any moment, and yet we still have to find the humor, the love, the anger, whatever it is that gets you through to the next minute.

``I heard an interview on the radio with a woman who studied every single religion; she's a comparative-religion specialist,'' McGovern continues. ``And she said, what it all boils down to was finding what was the magical and mystical in every other person you encounter, and that gives you the strength to go from minute to minute.''

McGovern mimes her hands on a steering wheel, and adds, ``As I was driving around, I thought, `That is pretty good. I think I'll keep that.' ''

David Kronke, [phone]

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NEW ANGST SHOWS

``Three Moons Over Milford'' (8 p.m. Sundays, ABC Family, currently on the air): Elizabeth McGovern stars in this whimsical hour-long dramedy examining how small-town residents cope with the fact that a sizable chunk of the moon may plummet into the Earth, ending life as we know it.

``Happy Hour'' (8:30 p.m. Thursdays, Fox, premiering Sept. 7): A young Midwestern man's (John Sloan) move to the big city has disastrous results, but he and his disaffected buddies (Lex Medlin, Beth Lacke) can always throw back a drink or two.

``The Class'' (8 p.m. Mondays, CBS, premiering Sept. 18): A young man (Jason Ritter) throws a reunion for members of his third-grade class, only to discover that most of them have already settled into miserable existences.

``Help Me Help You'' (9:30 p.m. Tuesdays, ABC, premiering Sept. 26): Ted Danson stars as a therapist presiding over group sessions peopled with bitter, adrift and utterly confused patients.

``20 Good Years'' (8 p.m. Wednesdays, NBC, premiering Oct. 4): John Lithgow and Jeffrey Tambor star as two 60-year-old men who resolve not to repeat the mistakes of their pasts in the time they have left.

``Jericho'' (8 p.m. Wednesdays, CBS, premiering Sept. 20): When nuclear weapons strike major American cities, a small Midwestern town finds itself cut off from the outside world, with no information as to the extent of the attacks -- or if any other survivors remain.

``In Case of Emergency'' (midseason replacement series, ABC, premiere date to be announced): Three school friends reunite in a hospital emergency room on the worst day of each of their lives; together, they resolve to bolster one another.

CAPTION(S):

7 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- color -- cover) LUNACY 

Things are getting wacky on TV as characters are fretting about, well, everything

(2 -- 5) Clockwise from top left: ``The Class''; ``20 Good Years,'' with John Lithgow and Jeffrey Tambor; ``Jericho''; Ted Danson in ``Help Me Help You.''

(6) Elizabeth McGovern, foreground, stars in ``Three Moons Over Milford,'' a dramedy about small-town residents living in limbo.

(7) The new sitcom ``Happy Hour,'' starring John Sloan, centers on the move of a young man from the Midwest to the big city.

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NEW ANGST SHOWS (see text)