Carol Leifer has her own sitcom. She’s a writer. She’s executive producer. She’s a tasty dessert topping.
OK, so we’re kidding about the last one. But the star of the WB network’s “Alright Already” (8:30 p.m. Sundays, WGN-Ch. 9) wears all those other hats.
“I knew it would be a lot of work,” she said, “but I’d seen other standups get a shot and have an EP who’s not in sync or a head writer whose jokes are completely different from theirs, and the show fails.”
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Besides writing a few scripts this season, she has fellow executive producer Stephen Engel (formerly of HBO’s “Dream On” and NBC’s “Mad About You”) beside her.
Leifer, a veteran of the late-’70s New York standup scene, was a writer-producer for three years on NBC’s “Seinfeld.” She went on to write and produce for HBO’s acclaimed “Larry Sanders Show.”
“I’ve had two very good role models on how to do it right in Jerry Seinfeld and Garry Shandling,” she said.
In her show, she’s a Miami woman coping with single life in South Beach and high-maintenance, retired parents (Jerry Adler and Mitzi McCall) — sort of a ” `Seinfeld’ South.”
Despite its pedigree, “Alright Already” is one of TV’s lowest-rated shows. Once upon a time, so was “Cheers,” notes Brad Turrell, The WB’s chief publicist. “We believe `Alright Already’ could be our `Cheers,’ ” he said.
The network has flip-flopped its lead-ins to try to build audience, moving “The Tom Show” to 7:30 and “Unhappily Ever After” to 8, Turrell said.
Leifer said she was vigorously courted by the young network, and enjoys its less formal structure. “There’s very few middlemen I have to go through, and I do fire people, so everybody’s nice to me,” she said.
“The good news about doing a sitcom is, hey, I’m not doing `A Doll’s House’ up there. We’re not looking for the next Meryl Streep.”