Humor in this 'House' is unsettling

But, like too much in this sloppy comedy, McKinney fails despite good intentions. Addiction and sitcoms are not strangers, and in some cases -- "Will & Grace," "Absolutely Fabulous" -- they click perfectly. But those shows didn't try to pluck the heartstrings while milking their desperate users for crazy laughs. On "House of Payne," the sad "awww" moments are jammed up against the "oh-no-they-didn't!" comic moments, and the result is just unsettling.

Alas, the writing, by Tyler Perry, who also created, directed, and executive produced, just isn't artful enough to be both touching and farcical. If the writing is consistent at all, it's consistently flat and awkward. In one episode, Janine's heartbroken husband, C.J. (Allen Payne), shows up at her rundown crack den with an anger-management counselor who is yet a swishier version of Al Franken's Stuart Smalley . (Remember? "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and, doggone it, people like me!") The scene is like "The Cosby Show" meets "The Wire," and as bizarre as that combination sounds. To make a point about how drugs break up families, and then ridicule the situation on the spot, it takes a surer hand than Perry's.

But "House of Payne" is not all about Janine. The hyphenate behind "Diary of a Mad Black Woman" and "Madea's Family Reunion ," Perry is trying to give TV, so short on characters of color, a new black family. The Paynes are a loving and multigenerational clan living in close quarters and on one another's nerves. And, as proof of his commitment to TV, Perry funded the show himself, before TBS picked it up.

But in the complicated process of ushering his project to the small screen, and guest starring in the premiere as Madea, he neglected to iron out and distinguish the material. The family's religious inclinations are interesting, as characters burst into singing on rare occasions, but they are rare and buried beneath too much bottom-of-the-barrel sitcom shtick. In tonight's ultra-cliched premiere, for example, Janine and C.J.'s chubby son Malik (Larramie "Doc" Shaw) gets bullied at school by a girl, and family horror ensues.

The focal point of the action is Curtis Payne ( LaVan Davis), a cranky husband whose house is crowded with his nephew C.J.'s family and his own scam-artist son. Davis hams it up as Curtis, yelling and screaming the same thing over and over again -- that he wants privacy, that his house is too crowded, that everyone should go elsewhere. Like all the other characters, and like Perry at his writing table, he comes off like a machine stuck repeating the same jokes.

Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. For more on TV, visit boston.com/ae/tv/blog.