The Roseanne Show

By JAMES COLLINS

"I'm an altogether different fat chick," says Roseanne, comparing herself with Rosie O'Donnell. She's right. Her new talk show has none of the comfy good cheer of Rosie's; it's cruder, more sensational and also more serious. Mostly the debut was banal, if often profane, as Whoopi Goldberg pontificated about Monica Lewinsky and Roseanne interviewed a tiresome Linda Tripp impersonator. But Roseanne and Goldberg's conversation with three teenage mothers was surprisingly simple and affecting. Roseanne's emotions are not polished to an Oprah-like smoothness, and she can be appealingly authentic, in her rare quieter moments.

--By James Collins