Before I get to my reservations with the execution, let me start by saying that Valerie Armstrong’s basic concept for AMC’s Kevin Can F**k Himself is possibly my favorite TV series premise in years.

For those who have forgotten, back in 2016, Kevin James starred in a sub-mediocre multi-cam sitcom called Kevin Can Wait, an instantly dated show about a newly retired, self-absorbed man-child married to the oft-exasperated Donna (Erinn Hayes)?

Cast: Annie Murphy, Eric Petersen, Mary Hollis Inboden, Alex Bonifer, Raymond Lee, Brian Howe.

Cut to Kevin Can F**k Himself, which at first looks like a dated multi-cam about self-absorbed man-child Kevin (Eric Petersen), constantly getting into misadventures with his equally juvenile neighbor and friend Neil (Alex Bonifer) and Neil’s grouchy sister, Patty (Mary Hollis Inboden).

The only person unamused by the shenanigans is Kevin’s wife, Allison (Annie Murphy).

With Oz Rodriguez (AP Bio), carving out a place as one of TV’s most visually innovative comedy directors and setting the early template, Kevin Can F**k Himself will be initially irresistible to aficionados of the traditional sitcom form; the show layers in amusement if you’re the sort of viewer interested in the timing of audience laughter or the use of versatile domestic sets that almost never reflect actual lower-income living conditions.

Allison is trapped, consciously or not, in a bad multi-cam sitcom, and I understand the desire in the first episode or two to establish that sitcom simply for contrast.

By the third and fourth episodes sent to critics, though, I began to resent that we, as viewers, are trapped watching that same bad sitcom even when Allison isn’t on-screen.

I’m not sure that Kevin Can F**k Himself is clearly enough aware that when Allison breaks out of the formal clichés of the multi-cam format, she’s simply moved into a different set of visual and narrative clichés?

Kevin Can F**k Himself isn’t quite able to become as funny or as dramatic as it should be, and part of the reason for that stems from not knowing if it’s punching up, punching down or punching at all

Kevin Can F**k himself isn’t one of those shows that has a great hook, but no potential beyond that