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31 WEDNESDAY HOME FREE (ABC, 8:30-9 p.m.) An utterly standard-issue new sitcom with a smart, talented cast, Home Free has a premise that sounds more complicated than it actually is. A 22-year-old newspaper writer, Matt Bailey (Matthew Perry), is still living at home with his widowed mother, Grace (Marian Mercer); in the pilot episode, their home is invaded by Matt's newly divorced sister Vanessa (Diana Canova) and her two children (Anndi and Scott McAfee- real-life siblings and as cute as two related buttons!). They're all living at home with Grace, for free-get the title now? The jokes on Home Free aren't much better than ones you'll hear on stuff like Step by Step or Empty Nest, but Perry, Mercer, and Canova are all so skilled that they frequently elicit chuckles just from the knowing, snappy way they deliver their lines. It's too early to be sure, but there also seems to be some comic potential in Matt's workplace, a dinky local newspaper edited by the enjoyably cranky Alan Oppenheimer, who used to play Murphy Brown's enjoyably cranky network honcho, Gene Kinsella. B-
MTV UNPLUGGED: ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT (MTV, 10-11 p.m.) Pop-culture hero-of-the- moment, and winner of two Grammy awards with the most eclectically funky act around, Arrested Development unplugs rather easily; the group's sensuous hip-hop grooves are highly amenable to acoustic instrumentation. With dancers, inspirational between-song monologues, and aimless instrumental digressions all part of their regular show, AD puts on a more elaborate, theatrical performance than have many previous Unplugged musicians. The hour occasionally drifts into tedium-it's very much a '60s Happening-but with these folks, even countercultural tediousness has its blissful charms. B+
HOLLYWOOD FX MASTERS (The Learning Channel, 8-8:30 p.m.) It's a bird, it's a plane, it's an Al Gore look-alike! Christopher Reeve hosts this new 13-part series exploring the world of stunts and special effects.
LIVING AND WORKING SPACE: THE COUNTDOWN HAS BEGUN (PBS, 8-9 p.m.) A special designed to teach kids about their intergalactic futures, featuring a rainbow of stars: Kathy Bates, Jaime Escalante, Jackee, Pat Morita, and Weird Al Yankovic.
1 THURSDAY
PICKET FENCES (CBS, 10-11 p.m.) David E. Kelley's offbeat small-town drama moves to a new night with an episode about a doctor (Shannon's Deal's Jamey Sheridan) using controversial fetal-tissue treatments.
2 FRIDAY
GOOD ADVICE (CBS, 9:30-10 p.m.) In this new sitcom, Shelley Long plays a marriage counselor named Susan DeRuzza, but she's really Diane Chambers with a Ph.D. in psychology-every snooty, snippy, slightly slapsticky aspect of Long's old Cheers character is intact here. She's paired with Treat Williams, whose last effort at series television found him yelling too much as a crusading lawyer in Eddie Dodd. In Good Advice, he's still a lawyer-a slick, cynical charmer of a divorce attorney named Jack Harold. These two professionals share an office suite. The running joke is that she steals his clients in the communal waiting room, convincing them that they need counseling, not divorce. In the opening episode, Susan catches her husband (Christopher McDonald) in an affair and sends him packing, leaving open the possibility for romantic byplay between Susan and Jack. The acting is crisp and occasionally funny here, but Good Advice is awfully predictable. Overseen by executive producer Danny Jacobson (Mad About You), this is the sort of show in which laughs are supposed to erupt when someone says, ''I'm married to a guy with a heat-seeking missile in his pants.'' Long and Williams deserve a better showcase than this sort of thing. C
