TV REVIEW : NBC’s ‘Working It Out’ Debuts

Continuing its sneak preview on its own fall season, NBC tonight introduces a promising comedy series about divorced persons in the ‘90s. Some of them, anyway.

If the protagonists of “Working It Out” (9 p.m. on Channels 4, 36 and 39) are not necessarily typical, however, their initial encounters with singles trendiness do make for an amusing premiere, which finds Sarah Marshall (Jane Curtin) and David Stuart (Stephen Collins) meeting at a cooking class. Their relationship begins over ravioli and advances over linguine.

Tonight’s episode, which is the pilot, will be repeated once before “Working It Out” settles into its regular 8:30 p.m. Saturday time period next month.

In Sarah, we meet someone with a stock Next Door Neighbor Who Barges In (played by Mary Beth Hurt in subsequent episodes) and a 10-year-old daughter (Kyndra Joy Casper) whose introduction to David tonight gets a little soggy.

However, Collins and Curtin (who last worked for executive producer Bill Persky on “Kate & Allie”) share a nice comic chemistry as the likable Sarah and David. And David Garrison does nicely as David’s best friend.

Meanwhile, Persky’s script is funny and intelligent, using flashbacks to chronicle that first meeting of Sarah and David, which serves up a manhunter and a matchmaker along with the pasta. It’s very tasty stuff.