How much enjoyment you get out of “The McCarthys” will depend on your tolerance for badly rendered Boston accents and whether you’ve maxxed out on gay-centric sitcoms that traffic in clichés.  The show, which begins on Thursday night on CBS, boasts perhaps the most efficient opening scene of the television season: In less than three minutes, you grasp the dynamics of both the titular family and the series. Mom (Laurie Metcalf, hilarious as always) and Dad (Jack McGee) and their four grown children live close to one another in Boston and, in classic sitcom fashion, are constantly gathered at the parents’ house. Three of the kids (Kelen Coleman, Joey McIntyre and Jimmy Dunn) are sports nuts like Dad, but the fourth, Ronny (Tyler Ritter), who is gay, prefers to bond with Mom over TV shows like “The Good Wife.”  These basics and more are laid out in a brisk opening scene, as is the central question of the episode: Which child will Dad, a high school basketball coach, choose to be his new assistant? To the surprise of everyone in the family but no one in the audience, it turns out to be Ronny.  There were long decades when no openly gay characters were seen on television, but nowadays, especially in sitcoms, they have become almost obligatory, and that makes a lot of the humor in “The McCarthys” a bit wearying. A fair amount of stereotyping also mars the premiere (beginning with the central conceit that gay men have no interest in sports). But Mr. Ritter sells the character pretty well. He’s a son of John Ritter of “Three’s Company” and inherited his father’s ease and comic timing.  The other McCarthys are also all familiar archetypes, which makes this show another in what seems to be a trend of comfort-food comedies: witty without being ambitious; safe rather than scalding.  CBS, Thursday nights at 9:30, Eastern and Pacific times; 8:30, Central time.  Produced by Sony Pictures Television in association with CBS Television Studios. Created by Brian Gallivan; Mike Sikowitz, Will Gluck, Richard Schwartz, Mr. Gallivan and Andy Ackerman, executive producers.  WITH: Tyler Ritter (Ronny McCarthy), Joey McIntyre (Gerard McCarthy), Jimmy Dunn (Sean McCarthy), Kelen Coleman (Jackie McCarthy), Jack McGee (Arthur McCarthy) and Laurie Metcalf (Marjorie McCarthy).  A version of this review appears in print on October 30, 2014, on page C3 of the New York edition with the headline: Welcome to Their World: Boston Accents and TV Sports. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe
“The McCarthys,” a new sitcom om CBS, stars Tyler Ritter as the odd one out in a close Boston family.