Review
Hit American sitcom Will and Grace is as perky as Friends and as wittily urbane as Frasier. The premise concerns Will (Eric McCormack), a mildly uptight lawyer who agrees to let his best friend, interior designer Grace (Debra Messing), to become his flatmate. Their relationship has all the hallmarks of lovers--emotional dependency, little things that get on each others' nerves, strong mutual interests and volcanic arguments. The only snag is that while Grace is straight, Will is gay. Though not shy of poking sharp fun at that situation, Will and Grace is among sitcom's most potent and sophisticated antidotes to homophobia. Though initially a little too pleased with its own camp pertness, the show grows and grows on you with successive episodes, finally becoming indispensable. It also benefits from secondary characters Jack (Sean P Hayes) and Karen (Megan Mullally), also gay and straight respectively, both outrageously and hilariously irresponsible characters: he a free spirit and freeloader, she's "working" as Grace's assistant, even though she doesn't need the money, having married it.
Despite its diamond and rapid-fire punch-lines, Will and Grace conveys enough sense of the main characters' lovelorn predicament to prevent it from becoming too cute.--David Stubbs