HEY, WB: YOUR 'HELP' ISN'T APPRECIATED HERE.

Byline: David Kronke Television Critic

`THE HELP'' is an abysmally cartoonish class-warfare sitcom about the beleaguered servants subjected to constant abuse by the brain-dead, ridiculously pampered members of a wealthy family. With gags devoted to ogling female anatomy, coupled with bewildering audience applause every time a minor oafish character comes on stage, it plays more like a virulent ``Mr. Show'' parody of a sitcom than the real item.

Maria (Camille Guaty), our putative heroine, is a maid with aspirations of attending beauty school. ``I just want to make the world beautiful,'' she gushes, ``except for blondes. I hate blondes.'' The laugh track busts a gut.

Tori Spelling plays the family's dog-walker, who tallies up her clients' business dealings on their perambulations - ``No plops for the Poopster,'' she actually has to say. Naturally, the laugh track busts a gut. Her character has sudden explosions of rage, inspired, no doubt, by Spelling's agent having gotten her on this program.

There is also a bimbo nanny, a sleazy personal trainer, a chauffeur who's sleeping with the family's teen daughter and the gardener who carries his leaf-blower everywhere, even into the family's ostensibly elegant living room. And yes, digestive tracts burst with each witless personality peccadillo revealed.

Friday's plot, such as it is, lands the servants en masse at an ATM, where an old woman asks them, ``Are you a singing group like the Village People?'' This inspires an insipid song-and-dance sequence in which the producers hope you don't notice that all the characters take money from the ATM without inserting cards or punching buttons. (Hey, that's how things are in Beverly Hills.) Performances are uniformly and risibly broad.

Blame ``Married ... With Children'' creator Ron Leavitt, who somehow has managed to concoct a program that's even less subtle than his earlier work. To the requisite hysteria from the laugh track, Maria observes, ``Life's funny in a nonamusing way.'' So it is with ``The Help.''

David Kronke, [phone]

david.kronke(at)dailynews.com

THE HELP - One star

What: Abysmally cartoonish class comedy about servants abused by a wealthy family.

Where: The WB (Channel 5).

When: 9:30 p.m. Friday.

In a nutshell: ``Upstairs, Downstairs'' - if downstairs were hell.

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Photo:

Camille Guaty is the maid, with Al Santos as the chauffeur, in ``The Help,'' a new WB comedy about the tensions between a rich family and those who work for them.