NBC has a winner. Their new series, West Wing is about a Right-of-center Republican Administration which is deftly trying to trim the Federal government down to a humane level. A hodge-podge of Left-wing social engineers, racial extortionists, and corrupt union hacks will try everything and anything to stop them. Wilford Brimley plays a lovable father-figure President who adores liberty, limited government, and the Constitution. In the first episode, the administration tries to pass a school-choice bill which will let poor inner-city black kids get top-flight private and parochial education. The Left will try anything to keep their Federal funding — even it means sacrificing an entire generation of minorities to poor education. For a while it looks like Brimley's upright Catholic chief of staff, played by Angela Landsbury, will get Borked because of her outspoken views against pedophilia. But in the end Brimley wins by exposing the greed, selfishness, and arrogance of faux do-gooders who really just want to profit from a morally bankrupt system to the point of denying scholarships for the underprivileged.

Naw, just kidding.

Alas, such a show could never get made. Television critics would denounce it as propaganda. Frank Rich, Bob Herbert, and Anthony Lewis would be terribly worried about the national trend, nay, the "nationalist" trend such a show would represent. There would be floor speeches from Maxine Waters. There'd be clever, punny headlines replacing "West" with "Right." Charles Grodin would pass a mid-sized St. Bernard through his sphincter.

Instead we get the West Wing we expected. A predictable tale of a bunch of well-meaning liberals who are trying to make this a better planet by getting rid of guns and God.

In the premiere, Josh Lyman is the well-meaning Begala-esque aide who cracked wise on a political talk show and is now worried he might lose his job. He gets in a fight with a female Ralph Reed character with an equally alliterative name, "Mary Marsh." She says you don't worship any "God I pray to!" Something the real Ralph Reed wouldn't even say to a Baal worshipper. Lyman comes back with a zippy line about how her God is under indictment for tax fraud. Clever guy! Clever dialogue, clever show!

Rob Lowe is the cute George Stephanopolous knock-off who mistakenly sleeps with a hooker — now who hasn't made that mistake? It's no big deal to him, mind you, it's just that the bad guys could use this everyday mistake against the President. This story unfolds because Lowe accidentally took her beeper. If only the Bard had had such plot devices.

There is also, of course the sly, ironic, brilliant communications director, the over-forty Ally McBeal press secretary, and others who get introduced but not explained much. Even the President is something of a mystery. Played by Martin Sheen, we don't see him until the show's almost over. When he arrives you get the sense that the show is about to start — and then it ends. He does better than most at playing the character he's been assigned. It's a sorry day for any cast when Martin Sheen blows everyone out of the water.

Because of its ensemble cast and the E.R.-style multiple plot lines, not much actually gets done in the first show. The "serious" policy issue that makes up the background plot is about several hundred Cuban refugees who are floating their way to the US. But it is the climactic scene which will surely infuriate many conservative and Christian viewers. Lyman — the Shecky Greene of Christophobes — has been ordered to eat crow and apologize to the Christian Right.

The tableau for this apology is the Oval Office during a Sunday morning coffee. At the meeting we meet three varieties of Christian zealot. One guy is clearly the dumb hypocrite. He quotes the Ten Commandments but gets the numbers wrong. Another is sort of a Pat Robertson/Billy Graham mix. He's lovable but gullible, having sold his soul to the politics of the Christian Right. And then there's our friend Mary Marsh. She is the savvy, tough-as-nails …. bigot. She makes a crack about the Jewish guys think they're so smart with their "New York humor." This is taken as a bit of anti-Semitism by the communications director, so he explodes and a huge argument erupts.

Fortunately, the President strides in to save the day. He's furious because a splinter Right-wing Christian group has been sending carved up Raggedy-Ann dolls to his 12-year-old granddaughter because she's pro-choice. So the dashing President throws everyone out. Forgives Josh Lyman, welcomes the Cubans to America, and everyone is happy.

The producers say this isn't about the Clinton administration. Rather, they think this is how a real liberal White House should work. Indeed they go out of their way to make it clear that this ain't no Clinton-intern-o-rama White House. In one scene the Chief of Staff uses some phrases like "geek" and "nerd" in the Oval Office. The President's secretary is horrified that such language is used. "Not in this room," she declares.

It will be interesting to see whether the series succeeds. Liberal vehicles fail as often as they succeed. But Washington vehicles almost always fail. Earlier in the decade, Hollywood tried another Washington drama about young politicos called The Roundtable. It deservedly died after a few episodes. When it comes to primetime entertainment, most couch potatoes like their politics on the side, not as the main course. So Northern Exposure, LA Law, the pernicious Picket Fences, and even the earnest Lou Grant all diluted their politics with interesting locations and characters. The White House is an interesting location, to be sure — but the fictional one is less interesting than the Home of A Thousand Delights we have here in the three-dimensional world. And as for the characters, it remains to be seen whether they're interesting, or just annoying whiners brimming with "New York humor."