Wishing y'all g'day

It's NOT the easiest assignment, to project earnest indignation in a bright fuchsia teddy, but Molly Shannon, the Kath to Selma Blair's Kim in NBC's new comedy "Kath & Kim," is working it. Gesturing emphatically with impeccably rendered French tips, she sends giant gold hoops swaying righteously from her earlobes, squinting with sincerity as she loses patience with her twentysomething TV daughter.

"Kim has been running amok for three episodes," said Michelle Nader, executive producer of the comedy. "I wanted to give her a real moment, to explain why she is the way she is. . . . We won't do it again."

With "Kath & Kim" (which premieres Oct. 9), the network takes a stab at one of Australia's most successful television programs, hoping for the same kind of success enjoyed by such foreign-born American hits as "Ugly Betty," from Colombia; and "The Office," from Britain. (Reveille serves as the U.S. production company for all three shows.)

Bringing "Kath & Kim" stateside first meant transposing the characters to Florida -- apparently, the center of all nuttiness in America. Then the producers went to work on paraphrasing the show's sensibility.

"It's cuckoo, crazy funny, but it's not like the Australian version," Nader says. "They didn't go for anything emotional."

As is typical of many Australian shows, the original series ran for only eight episodes in each of its four seasons. Concerned her forebears opted for a sketch comedy approach that might wear thin over the course of 22 installments, Nader deepened the mother-daughter drama and chose to steer clear of the snark.

"I don't like that stance that 'we're smarter than them,' " said Nader, who also worked on "The King of Queens" and "Dharma & Greg." "The comedy I like most has pathos."

Hence the big moment: Kim, poor lass, has searched the whole mall over, but somehow still lacks a direction in life. Nope, not even selling lingerie to housewives will fill the void. In Kim's own trenchant analysis, "It's too much work."

It's Valley hot on set on this August day in West Hills, sweltering enough to melt the Pam Anderson-style barbed wire tattoo right off Blair's left biceps. With a personal creed cut-and-pasted directly from celebrity rags, her Kim possesses almost Hilton-like powers of self-absorption. But this caricature, she hopes, is not entirely devoid of a soul.

"It's a sophisticated show about common people," Blair said. "She's like a lot of girls you see at the mall. I have a soft spot for her."