Critics have different opinions on the new TV series "Kath & Kim," which landed from Australia, where it had a great success, with a different cast, right into NBC’s fall schedule. The show has been effortlessly Americanized up to the point where you can recognize your neighbors across the lawn in the two main characters, with animal print rugs and bags and car seats and all the arsenal a self-respecting suburbanite has on hand.

Kath and Kim, mother and daughter both raised in front of the TV with a glossy magazine in one hand and a tabloid in the other are played by Molly Shannon, best known for her work with the SNL team, and also, for Seinfeld fans, as the woman who walked like a gorilla holding buckets, and Selma Blair, a young promising actress.

If you’re not the kind to watch movies where people wear corsets and powdered wigs, like “Dangerous Liaisons,” where Blair played the innocent and virginal victim of John Malcovich, you sure must remember that preposterous scene in the chick comedy “The Sweetest Thing,” starring Christina Applegate and Cameron Diaz. In that particular movie, Selma found herself in the most uncomfortable position, and all she could do to get out of it was to sing, well…hum Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing,” along with her trusty friends and all the neighbors.

In “Kath and Kim,” Both Selma and Molly deliver great performances as ultra-superficial self-absorbed thick-headed gals in the suburbs. Their characters are so beautifully constructed, it’s almost scary. The way they talk, the way they dress, even the most fugitive looks on their faces add up to the terrifying portrait of many women that live around us.

You know what I’m talking about.  They want to be trophy wives, they don’t know how to cook, not even how to turn on the microwave and they dream of a Britney Spears-like life. The sweet thing is, when you get to know them better, through their inner thoughts, you find two really innocent and harmless souls. Kath and Kim are so clueless, it’s funny and almost endearing in the same time.

The plot is simple and it doesn’t involve many characters or philosophical twists. Kim comes back home to her mother, after she leaves her husband, because of their constant fighting about the dinner-cooking thing. But, as any loving mother, Kath surprises her daughter with the new arrangements she made in Kim’s old bedroom. A gym, of course, where mother obsessively exercises, due to her constant fear of getting old, a fear that her young daughter shares as well.

Shannon and Blair are delicious in this easy-like-a-Sunday morning comedy, or, as some say, like a 30-minute SNL skit.