Uncle Saul (Jeffrey Tambor, left), Jesus the doorman (Al Madrigal) and the rest of the weird crew of Welcome To The Captain have struck an iceberg.

A couple of years ago Neil Diamond sang, "If you're captain of a shipwreck, I'll be first mate to your shame."

Well ... all aboard.

Not that Welcome To The Captain, which debuts Monday on CBS and CTV, is the worst sitcom in the history of TV. It has a very strange tone, though, and not necessarily strange in an endearing way, like, say, Arrested Development.

The Arrested Development comparison comes up because of the presence of Jeffrey Tambor in Welcome To The Captain. Now, Tambor raises the level of just about anything he's in, but his 63-year-old legs have to support a lot of weight in this case.

Tambor's presence

To be completely honest, the presence of Tambor probably is the only reason not to immediately throw Welcome To The Captain onto the poop deck. He's in it, so it has to get better, right? Right?

Welcome To The Captain stars bland leading man Fran Kranz as Josh, a writer who previously won an Academy Award for a short film. Since then he has hit a dry spell in Hollywood and is about to move back to New York when his friend Marty, played by Chris Klein, announces there's a vacancy in his apartment building.

Even though Josh is skeptical that a mere change of West Coast scenery is going to make any difference in his life, he listens to Marty and moves into El Capitan, an apartment building that is known to its residents as "The Captain."

In predictable sitcom style, "The Captain" is filled with wildly eccentric characters, from Uncle Saul (a former Three's Company writer -- or "Tee-co," as he refers to it -- played by Tambor), to Jesus (a nosey-nate doorman who pronounces his name in the Biblical way, played by Al Madrigal, although you'll swear it's Fred Armisen from Saturday Night Live) to Charlene (a fetching cougar played by the still-formidable, 67-year-old Raquel Welch).

In fact, in the debut episode, Josh winds up having sex with Charlene. Upon hearing the news, Marty gets a slightly disturbed look on his face and tells Josh, "You know what? ... That's a start."

Of course, there is a more age-appropriate love interest for Josh in the presence of Hope -- her name is Hope, get it? -- played by the fetching Joanna Garcia. Hope just happens to be an acupuncturist, who just happens to have taken her final exam on the day Josh moves into the building, and they both just happen to be free immediately for an impromptu acupuncture session.

What's the level of humour we're talking about here?

Well, fairly quickly during that acupuncture session, Hope notices that Josh is pitching a "tent," a.k.a., an erection. Josh apologizes profusely, but Hope says, "For what, being a human being? You think about sex all day, I think about sex all day, it's really not that big of a deal. I'm actually kind of flattered."

To which Josh says, "Okay, that's it, you confirmed it, you're the coolest woman I've ever met."

We laughed legitimately hard only once during the first episode of Welcome To The Captain, during a scene on a golf course. Not surprisingly, the big laugh is provided by Tambor.

Again, Tambor is in this, so we don't want to dismiss Welcome To The Captain entirely. But at first glance, the whole thing is kind of like Robson Arms on Ecstasy.

While watching Welcome To The Captain the other day, someone else wandered past the TV and paused for two minutes.

"So," this passer-by finally said, "because of the writers strike in the U.S., are the networks wheeling out all the stuff that wasn't deemed good enough in the first place?"

Not a bad theory, matey.