If you put two great comedic talents together, like David Alan Grier (In Living Color) and Delta Burke (Designing Women), the result should be a great sitcom. And there may be one someday, but NBC's White House D.A.G. comedy isn't it.

        D.A.G., premiering today (9:30 p.m., Channels 5, 22), continues the pattern of NBC's comedy woes — taking talented stars (such as Michael Richards) and surrounding them with insultingly stupid supporting characters.

        Ms. Burke and Mr. Grier are perfect for the roles of vain, manipulative First Lady Judith Whitman and Secret Service Agent Jerome “Dag” Daggett.

        In the debut, “Dag” has been demoted to the “B team” after leaping the wrong way trying to guard the president (guest star David Rasche from Sledge Hammer!) in an assassination attempt. It's the one-joke premise for the series that NBC has given away in D.A.G. promotions, and producers beat to death in the first two episodes.

        As Dag puts it, he's “stuck driving Miss Daisy” while his best buddy (Mel Jackson, Soul Food) goes to the Washington Redskins game with the president.

        The First Lady's staff consists of the some of the last people you'd imagine — a convicted con artist as her secretary (Lauren Tom, Grace Under Fire), an incompetent chief of staff (Paul F. Tompkins, Mr. Show), and a dense Secret Service agent who can never find his gun (Stephen Dunham, Oh, Grow Up). These folks wouldn't make the “D” team on an UPN comedy.

        Aside the Grier-Burke exchanges, the best lines come at the expense of Mr. Rasche, the delightfully demented commander-in-chief who spends hours watching a Real World marathon. NBC, which was smart enough to bring him back again next week, should make Mr. Rasche a permanent cast member and ditch one of the weaker links. Doing D.A.G. without Mr. Rasche would be like doing The West Wing without Martin Sheen.

        What a waste of talent, D.A.G-gonnit.

        Give thanks: The traditional soul food Thanksgiving for Michael Washington's Blue Ash family will be featured on Thanksgiving Across America (10 p.m. Wednesday, Food Network).

        Mr. Washington, director of African-American studies at Northern Kentucky University, gives viewers a tour of his old Hazlewood neighborhood in Blue Ash before sitting down to a family feast of turkey, black-eyed peas, macaroni and cheese and corn bread dressing.

        Viewers also will get a taste of other traditions — turkey with Yankee creamed onions (Massachusetts), with ham and pickled herring (Nebraska), or Cajun deep-fried turkey with seafood gumbo (Louisiana).

        Stuart Zanger, former WCPO-TV (Channel 9) news director, and his wife, Karen, produced the one-hour special for the cable channel owned by Cincinnati-based E.W. Scripps, which also owns Channel 9.

        It was shot on Thanksgiving day across America last year by crews in Ohio, Massachusetts, New York, Louisiana, Nebraska and California. The Zangers edited the show from 30 hours of tape with the help of former Channel 9 staffers Larry and Mary Kay Deal of Deal Video and Editing in Florence.

        Talk shows: Today's talk show highlights include parents of ill-behaved teens on Jenny Jones (10 a.m., Channel 64); Sela Ward and Geena Davis on The View (11 a.m., Channel 9); a Utah polygamist and his five wives on Sally Jessy Raphael (noon, Channel 19); Lily Tomlin and Ben Affleck on Rosie O'Donnell (3 p.m., Channel 5); controlling women on Oprah Winfrey (4 p.m., Channel 9).

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