Give Steve Byrne some credit. While characters like Ken Jeong’s Chang in “Community,” Matthew Moy’s Han Lee in “2 Broke Girls” and Margaret Cho’s Kim Jong-il in “30 Rock” get laughs for being clueless, scheming, weird, asexual and short, Mr. Byrne is playing an Asian-American paragon: socially skilled, well behaved, relatively tall and attractive enough to have not one but two sexy love interests.


Now if only he were funny. It’s painful but necessary to report that “Sullivan & Son,” the new comedy starting Thursday night on TBS that stars Mr. Byrne, a stand-up comedian who created the show with the “Cheers” veteran Rob Long, has fewer explosive laughs per episode than Mr. Jeong provides per minute.


The setting of “Sullivan & Son” calls to mind “Cheers,” but the humor and pacing are from an earlier era: “Archie Bunker’s Place” without the racist epithets. Steve Sullivan, like Mr. Byrne, is an Irish-Korean American who grew up in Pittsburgh. Home for his father’s 60th birthday, he has an unconvincing epiphany, dumps his investment-banker job and takes over the family pub.


A barroom comedy crossed with an ethnic-family comedy, “Sullivan & Son” is interesting primarily for how it indulges in racial humor while insisting on its own high-mindedness, the same formula Norman Lear employed to greater comic effect 40 years ago.


That Mr. Byrne is the star and his character is the exemplar of reasonableness and moral courage just makes it more painful when the show’s Archie Bunker substitute, a barfly played by Brian Doyle-Murray, goes on a long racist rant, prompting Steve to shriek, “God I miss this” and double over laughing. It’s hard to be both a cultural trailblazer and a traditional sitcom everyman, and Steve ends up registering as deracinated and neutered in the bargain. It’s difficult to tell whether Mr. Byrne’s stiff performance is a cause or an effect.


Perhaps there will be a point here about growing by reclaiming your cultural heritage, but so far it’s not being made. The nonracial humor, meanwhile, is hit and mostly miss. Christine Ebersole manages to be funny playing a surprisingly crude version of the oversexed blonde that seems to be her lot on TV. (This may be the place to note that one of the show’s executive producers is Vince Vaughn; Mr. Byrne has appeared in several of his movies.)


By far the best things about the show — and maybe reason enough to watch it, if you have a weakness for formulaic sitcoms — are the performances of Jodi Long and Vivian Bang as Steve’s mother and sister, a pair of funny-because-they’re-sort-of-true stereotypes.


Ms. Long, whose extensive credits include the foundational Asian-American sitcom “All-American Girl,” does a low-key modern twist on the immigrant dragon-lady mom, giving a casual iciness to lines like, “Get over it, Miss Never Seen a Severed Head on a Stick.” Funniest of all is Ms. Bang as the angriest, most resentful second child ever, who literally screams with frustration at Steve’s easy popularity.


In fairness, the show’s most overdrawn stereotype is a white woman, Steve’s status-obsessed New York girlfriend, who spends the pilot episode remarking on the backwardness and danger of Pittsburgh. How can he stay, she asks, in a city where they don’t know that a cup of coffee should cost $4? After that, you’re ready for a good smelly-food joke.


Sullivan & Son


TBS, Thursday nights at 10, Eastern and Pacific times; 9, Central time.


Produced for TBS by Wild West Picture Show Productions, in association with Warner Horizon Television. Created by Rob Long and Steve Byrne; Vince Vaughn, Peter Billingsley and Rob Long, executive producers.


WITH: Steve Byrne (Steve Sullivan), Dan Lauria (Jack Sullivan), Christine Ebersole (Carol Walsh), Brian Doyle-Murray (Hank Murphy), Jodi Long (Ok Cha Sullivan), Valerie Azlynn (Melanie Sutton), Vivian Bang (Susan Sullivan) and Owen Benjamin (Owen Walsh).