• Oprah's Big Give, 8-9 p.m. Sunday, WPLG-ABC 10
• Unhitched, 9:30-10 p.m. Sunday, WSVN-Fox 7
I always hesitate to make grand historical claims about a new TV show. But even giving caution and forbearance their due, I think I'm on solid ground when I say that, for better or certainly in the opinion of a lot of people for much, much worse, Fox's new sitcom Unhitched breaks new ground. Broadcast television may have had shows that were more raunchy, more disgusting or more juvenile -- though not many, not many -- but I'm certain it's never had one that required digital pixilation of monkey genitalia. At least not in the first three minutes of the pilot episode.
This is the sort of thing that happens when you turn to Bobby and Peter Farrelly, the makers of relentlessly sophomoric films like There's Something About Mary and Dumber and Dumber, for a TV show. And in Unhitched, which follows the sexual misfortunes of four newly single pals in their 30s, it happens over and over and over and over: Crude double entendres. (Think: hiccup while pronouncing the word ''cocktail.'') Breathtaking scatological references. (Think: . . . oh, not even gonna try.) Jailbait jokes. And, especially, catastrophic couplings.
There's commercial sex, casual sex, leprechaun sex, mime sex, proxy sex, weird-appendage sex, Heimlich-maneuver sex, Cirque du Soleil sex, anatomically unlikely sex and hot monkey sex, by which I mean sex with angry monkeys. I'm tempted to say that with the latter, Unhitched has crossed television's final boundary, but with this show, that would just be asking for it.
Not that Unhitched isn't funny, provided you lack character, shame or the remotest semblance of maturity. The relatively no-name cast (which includes Craig Bierko as a recently dumped financial planner, Rashida Jones as a divorce lawyer better at managing breakups than relationships, and Johnny Sneed as a three-time-loser party boy) is excellent, and the goofball writing hilarious: I laughed helplessly when one character breaks from a deep, breathy kiss to assure her partner, ''I don't usually pick up guys at the ATM.'' But this is buyer-beware territory, with something to offend practically everybody whose age or IQ exceeds 16.
`OPRAH'S BIG GIVE'
So is Sunday's other new entry, Oprah's Big Give, an attempt to graft the sob-sister mawk of Queen for a Day onto the Machiavellian hardball of The Apprentice or Survivor. Impressively, the sum is greater than the parts: Oprah's Big Give is no mere appallingly bad television show but a refutation of human decency itself.
The idea is that 10 contestants vie to see who can give away Oprah Winfrey's pocket change to the lame and wounded with more bathetic elan. Even if you can get past the grotesque paradox of the show -- that the homeless, crippled and battered objects of its manipulative charity get a few thousand dollars, while their faux benefactors compete for a $1 million prize -- it's an hour of tearful confessions, tinkling pianos, group hugs and basically everything repulsive about Western civilization.
Such amusement as it provides comes from the contestants, whose cubic-zirconium souls are rivaled only by their Swiss-cheese brains. Asked to explain why she wanted to be on the show (aside from, you know, the million bucks), one contestant explains she was upset by hitting 40. ''There's two things you can do when you go through that midlife crisis,'' she says. ''You can either get a boob job, get Botox, or truly turn your life around.'' Honey, that's three things (four, I can hear those evil Farrelly brothers shrieking from the other show, if you get both boobs done), but who's counting? Except Oprah's accountants.
