Bar owner David Crowley watches his son's TV series. (Craig Ruttle photo) | ZOOM |

        With ESPN's Monday Night Countdown on three TVs, Crowley's Highland House Cafe in Mount Adams looks like any bar preparing for Monday Night Football. But not for long.

        NBC's Daddio comes on at 8 p.m., and proprietor David Crowley is doing his part to promote his son's TV series. Kevin Crowley plays Rod the wacky neighbor on Michael Chiklis' stay-at-home dad family comedy.

        “About five minutes till, I'll tell everyone to shut up,” Mr. Crowley says.

Kevin Crowley (top left) in the cast photo. | ZOOM |

        And he does.

        At 7:55 p.m., the bartender changes the channel to Channel 5 as Mr. Crowley steps in front of the big screen TV by the coin-operated Golden Tee video golf game.

        “I want to tell you a little bit about Kevin, the oldest of my four children,” says Mr. Crowley, 63, whose father opened the Irish pub five months after he was born in 1937.

        “He has always been, and will continue to be, one of the most delightful people you'll ever meet.”

Flair for comedy

        Mr. Crowley says Kevin, who was raised in Mount Adams and Fort Mitchell, has a natural flair for comedy, which helped launch his career at Chicago's famed Second City comedy troupe in 1985.

        He moved to Hollywood in 1994 to co-star in CBS' The Boys Are Back, a short-lived Suzanne Pleshette-Hal Linden comedy. He also has appeared in CBS' Can't Hurry Love with Nancy McKeon, The Jeff Foxworthy Show and the Drew Carey Show.

ON THE AIR

What: Daddio   Where: Channels 5, 22   When: 8 p.m. Mondays

        “He was always the kid running into the door,” Kevin's dad says, “and going aroundwith his pants unzipped.”

        “Like his father!” someone shouts from the back of the bar.

        Cincinnati's proud Daddio continues to boast about his son until somebody hollers that the show was starting. The crowd silently watches the opening scene and then erupts in a cheer. A touchdown? No, just Kevin Crowley's name in the opening credits.

        The Daddio diversion has been on Crowley's menu since the sitcom's six-week tryout on NBC last March. Ratings were strong enough at 8:30 p.m. Thursdays, between Friends and Frasier, for NBC to have Daddio kick off Mondays this fall.

        “The first time I did this, I had to throw two people out of the bar for being too loud,” Mr. Crowley says.

        “I told them, "It's my son's show. Sit with us and drink a beer.' But they wouldn't.”

Packed with Crowleys

        Mr. Crowley has worked tougher crowds. When The Boys Are Back debuted six years ago, he was a social services worker in Bosnia distributing food, medicine, seed and fertilizer.

        The longtime political activist moved Kevin and his family to Columbus in 1973 when Mr. Crowley was named Ohio Commission on Aging director by Gov. John Gilligan, another Cincinnati Irishman. When Mr. Gilligan lost the 1974 election, Mr. Crowley took a federal job in Washington.

        He finally returned home in 1995 to take over the family business from his ailing brother, Mike.

        On this night, Mr. Crowley doesn't have any problem keeping the crowd quiet. Then again, the Mount Adams landmark is packed with all kinds of Crowleys for the season premiere.

        Another cheer explodes about 10 minutes later, when Kevin appears on the screen in a red plaid shirt and Dockers trying to fix his neighbor's sprinkler system.

        “That's exactly the way he dresses — in old clothes,” Sister Jeanne Marian “Cookie” Crowley of the Sisters of Charity says about her nephew. “He doesn't know how to act. That's just Kevin.”

Busy in Hollywood
        Kevin has kept busy in Hollywood. He has appeared in Backdraft, Hoffa, The Fugitive, The Practice, The Package, Major League, Major League 2 and a series of Miller Lite Beer commercials (as “Paul the Party Guy”). His play, Disgruntled Employee, was one of 12 winners at the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Center in Waterford, Conn., in 1998.

        When Kevin brought home his infant son in 1997 to be baptized at Holy Cross-Immaculata Catholic Church in Mount Adams, a block away from the bar, he also slipped in a promotional visit as “Paul the Party Guy” for Miller at Crowley's.

        Last November he celebrated his 40th birthday in the family tavern. “Shut down the bar,” he told me when we met at an NBC party last summer in Los Angeles.

        On this night, Kevin is barely seen at Crowley's. He had one scene with three lines in the TV season premiere, which featured guest star Donny Osmond.

        “We want more Kevin! We want more Kevin!” Mr. Crowley shouts at the TV from his bar stool by the big-screen TV during a commercial break.

        When the bar empties after the show, Mr. Crowley grabs a cold draft beer and sits at a table under the Jameson Irish Whiskey sign.

        “Sitcoms — I wouldn't watch 'em if Kevin weren't in them,” he says.

        He sips on the beer.

        “I wished they would have given him at least two minutes tonight, instead of one minute,” he says.

        “He said he had a big part in the first show of the season, and then they switched episodes.”

        Somebody behind the bar cranks up Bruce Springsteen's “Dancing in the Dark.”

        The TVs are switched back to ESPN's Monday Night Countdown. Fifteen minutes until kick-off.

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