LOS ANGELES - If only Kelly Rippa's new Hope & Faith sitcom was as funny as her press conference with TV critics.

But it isn't.

Regis Philbin's sidekick, and former All My Children star, was funny, genuine and unpredictable.

Those words never will be used to describe her first prime-time series, in which she plays a fired soap actress living with her sister (Faith Ford, Murphy Brown), brother-in-law and their three kids.

Children 'like pancakes'

In real life, Rippa has the three kids - in case you don't regularly watch her with Regis - while Ford is childless.

"You know, children are a lot like pancakes," Rippa told members of the Television Critics Association.

"You sort of ruin the first one, and you get better at it the second time around. And by the third one, you flip it over at just the right time."

Her conversation with TV critics was much like the opening minutes of Live with Regis and Kelly (9 a.m. weekdays, Channel 9). You never knew what she would say next.

It was a refreshing contrast to ABC's Hope & Faith, which has been filled with silly sitcom stuff - Rippa baking cookies in low-cut lingerie, making a mess of the kitchen, and crashing the car into the garage.

Soapy plot line

Rippa's character - inexplicably called "Faith" - moved in with her big sister after she lost her soap role when her evil twin killed her, then committed suicide.

"Usually when you die on a soap opera, you are killed and brought back as your evil twin," said Rippa, who won three Soap Opera Digest awards for playing Hayley Vaughan on All My Children.

On Hope & Faith, "my character's evil twin kills her, and then kills herself. This is groundbreaking! Expect to see this pop up on all the shows!" she said, laughing.

"Normally on a soap opera, you're not dead until you - as a person - are actually dead," she said. "And even that can be negotiated."

Rippa, who is married to All My Children co-star Mark Consuelos, said she wanted a prime-time series because she had too much free time.

"I work at Live in the morning, and it's literally one hour of work a day ... I was done with work at 10 a.m.," said Rippa, who replaced Kathie Lee Gifford on the talk show two years ago.

"After you work on a daytime drama, everything seems like part-time work after that, because it's the hardest job there is," she said.

If that's true, the second hardest must be making people laugh, week after week, in a situation comedy.

The funniest part of Hope & Faith is the messy food fight between sisters, shown in every ABC promotion for the sitcom. But if they resorted to the food fight in the first show, what will they do in the second? This is not a good sign.

However, if they do another food fight in a subsequent episode...

"I still remember the moves!" Rippa told TV critics.

"Mustard. Ketchup. Chocolate. Whipped cream. Spit. Water. Fall to the floor!"

To accommodate Rippa, Hope & Faith will be filmed in New York, instead of Hollywood. For Ford, it will be a return to the city where she started her career, at 18, on another soap, One Life to Live.

For ABC, it will be a plum promotional platform. Rippa can talk every morning with Regis about the sitcom, along with updates on her kids, apartment remodeling, etc....

Regis, she said, "has been wonderfully supportive" about her nighttime TV job.

"I know he likes to play the gruff guy that is constantly goading me on the air," she said, "but he's been wonderfully, wonderfully behind this. I'm hoping that maybe he'll play - I don't know - the sleazy agent down the line."

So does she consider herself an actress or a talk show host?

"I consider myself a fairy princess," she told Regis a few days later on TV while talking about her press tour appearance.

She answered the question this way for critics: "It's so ironic, that only when I got the talk show, did most people then see me as an actress and start offering me roles.

"I do see myself as an actress. I don't think I'm very good at (talk shows)... I think that is a craft that will develop with me over time."

As long as Regis is around, she doesn't need to worry. He carries the show, introducing most segments and the commercial breaks.

"When he's gone, I feel completely useless," she said. "When he takes a day off, I'm like, 'Oh no, those poor souls have me interviewing them.'

"You know, Regis is Regis. And when he's there, I mean it's like ... I often feel they shouldn't pay me for those days, because there's just no work there. It's so much fun. It's so effortless."

Not pay you? You want Reeg to know you said that?

"You're right about the pay thing," she says with another laugh. "He is just so delightful, and I just never thought that I would have such a job where I just laugh for an entire hour."

Too bad few will laugh at her half-hour ABC comedy. To bad viewers won't see the real Rippa, the really funny Rippa, in prime-time this fall.

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E-mail jkiesewetter@enquirer.com