UPN’s ‘Moesha’ Shows That Growing Up Is Hard to Do

UPN’s new “Moesha” is that perfect match: a juvenile comedy for a juvenile audience.

It was created by the team of Sara V. Finney and Vida Spears, former producers on ABC’s “Family Matters,” and by Ralph Farquhar. The latter’s U-turn here toward a soft comedy about middle-class African Americans contrasts sharply with “South Central,” his bold, distinctive, hard-edged urban comedy that aired briefly on Fox in 1994, coming up short on ratings, long on criticism from blacks who felt it pictured them inaccurately as an underclass characterized by drugs, violent crime and absentee fathers.

Nothing special, his new comedy isn’t likely to offend anyone, and how many it amuses remains to be seen.

Showcasing music star Brandy Norwood as a typically rebellious 16-year-old coping with the pressures of growing up--yadda yadda yadda--”Moesha” opens in front of “Minor Adjustments,” the former NBC comedy whose adult black protagonists are also middle-class professionals.

Norwood is likable and energetic enough as Moesha Mitchell, who lives in Los Angeles with her amiable car salesman father (William Allen Young), her precocious younger brother (Marcus T. Paulk) and their widower father’s personable new wife, Dee (Sheryl Lee Ralph), a teacher at Moesha’s high school.

Moesha divides her time between her relatively serene home and a boisterous teen hangout called the Den, where she and her pals cavort and eye boys (“Check out the booty on that cutie”). The conflicts come on the home front, where Moesha and Dee awkwardly adjust to each other while competing for turf and control. Tonight Moesha gets grounded and Dee gets tested.

Much of it is pretty silly stuff, but maybe a younger crowd--the studio audience is constantly woo-wooing--will be more appreciative.

* “Moesha” premieres at 8 tonight, followed at 8:30 p.m. by “Minor Adjustments,” on UPN (Channel 13).