'Sons & Daughters' When: 9 and 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, ABC. Starring: Dee Wallace. 'The Unit' When: Dennis Haysbert. Starring: 9 p.m. Tuesday, CBS.

Premiering with back-to-back episodes at 9 and 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, ABC's "Sons & Daughters" will be an interesting test. This single-camera sitcom is populated with unlikable characters just like critical darling, viewer-rejected "Arrested Development." The primary difference? The "Sons" cast of loons are less outrageous, less stylized, less over-the-top. And the setting isn't Los Angeles-centric ? it's a suburb of Cincinnati.

Personally, I found "Arrested" funnier, but "Sons & Daughters" has its moments.

Partially improvised and partially scripted, "Sons" explores relationships and parenting among an extended family. Cameron (Fred Goss, also credited with creating and writing the show) throws a 25th anniversary party for his mother (Dee Wallace) and step-father (Max Gail); his sister Sharon (Alison Quinn) grapples with intimacy issues with husband Don (Jerry Lambert); step-sister Jenna (Amanda Walsh) is still attracted to "bad boys" despite the headaches caused by Whitey (Greg Pitts), her chucklehead ex.

Cameron's party plan begins to unravel after his step-father confides that he may leave Cameron's mother, news Cameron shares wwwith his sister that's also overheard by her pre-teen daughter, who spreads it further.

The show's humor comes mostly from one-liners ("It's like tosssing a wrench in a closet," Don says of sex with his wife) and awkward situations that walk a fine line between "That's our life!"-relateable and "This hits too close to home"-awkward.

'The Unit'

When you know a pilot episode was written by acclaimed playwright David Mamet ("Glengarry Glen Ross") and executive produced by TV veteran Shawn Ryan ("The Shield"), you expect something more than "The Agency" meets "Desperate Housewives." Yet that's an apt description of CBS's "The Unit" (9 p.m. Tuesday, CBS), a not-awful but not-great drama about special forces soldiers and their wives.

The series improves somewhat in later episodes after this week's pilot, but the show still feels constructed and plotted; it's never as real as, say, "The Shield." Even "24" at its least believable creates a true enough universe that it feels plausible within its own reality.

Dennis Haysbert ("24") stars as unit head Jonas Blane, who is responsible for the integration of new recruit Bob Brown (Scott Foley) into an ethnically diverse group of soldiers. Blane's wife, Molly (Regina Taylor, "I'll Fly Away"), is the mother hen of the wives, who live on base on the same street.

Independent-minded Kim Brown (Audrey Marie Anderson) chafes under the rules of the new neighborhood, even as Molly advises, "You aren't in the Army, you're in the Unit."

In the pilot, Blane and Brown are on a mission in Idaho when terrorists hijack a plane at a nearby airport. They make their way there, Blane bigfoots local authorities and works to resolve the hijacking in action-movie style. Though some of the theatrics seem a little over-the-top (Blane's quick reactions almost seem like super powers), future episodes that concentrate on training prove Blane's reactions may not have been out of the realm of possibility.

The homefront stories occasionally make you sit up and take notice, but too often they're pedestrian and predictable: Kim Brown suffered a miscarriage, lost her faith in God and doesn't want her daughter praying, but she predictably softens her stance by the end of an upcoming episode.