The television industry shouldn’t make shows about itself, except when it should. On paper, as they say, almost everything about “Better Things” feels like just another bit of myopically unneeded showbiz show making: A former child star and single mom tries to balance raising three daughters and searching for actual parts while paying the bills by voicing cartoons and commercials. Allegiant is the precocious, eternally wise, eccentric and unflappable middle child, who seems to have little OCD-like tics that don’t worry anyone; Duke (Olivia Edward, “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”) is the youngest child who sometimes seems more grown up than anyone else in the family. [...] each episode (10 have been ordered, five were made available to critics) is about Sam’s daily life, a mix of work, child care, chores and appointments. Sam lets herself feel tentatively secure when she gets a part as an alien and asks the makeup people if they can’t do something to make her look younger. Despite living in the cocoon of Hollywood, she could just as easily be a corporate executive, an accountant, a checkout cashier at a market or any other real-life job. The actresses playing the three daughters are gold mines of talent; you won’t mistake them for the “Hollywood kids” who often populate films and TV shows. David Duchovny (“Aquarius”) plays an exaggerated version of himself, deciding halfway through a film shoot that his character should be Buddhist and wear prayer beads, which of course means all previous film will need to be reshot. Other welcome guest stars: “Everybody Loves Raymond” co-creator Philip Rosenthal, musician Lenny Kravitz and several others. Don’t expect the first episode to knock you over with a hurricane of information, setups, character backgrounds, etc. David Wiegand is an assistant managing editor and the TV critic of The San Francisco Chronicle.
