Lifetime Television tonight presents “Rita Rocks,” its first original comedy series in about a decade. The family comedy entitled “Rita Rocks” – the title says a lot about the subject – revolves around a busy mom of teen and pre-teen daughters who wants a little bit more from life. Her escape from a life that she finds somehow unsatisfying is a garage band that brings that sparkle back in her eyes just like “a couple of decades ago” when she played the guitar and sang and had so much sparkle in her eyes.

The original elements of this sitcom are the musical part and the real-life focus. Nicole Sullivan (“King of Queens,” “MADtv”), who stars as an overworked mom in a midlife crisis in this new sitcom, says she hopes that Lifetime’s female audience will find it easy to relate to Rita Clemens. With this new comedy, the female audience may find an opportunity to reduce the time they spent to deal with common complaints such as ‘my husband doesn’t understand me,’ ‘I have to take care of everyone and my needs always come last,’ ‘I can’t communicate with my kids well.’ The character played by Nicole Sullivan is “gifted” with all the midlife maladies and she often finds it hard to deal with all these problems.

One of the real-life details that make it easy for Natalie Sullivan to become Rita is the fact that Nicole herself is a wife and a mother of a 1-year-old son, so she is somehow familiar with all these experiences.

“Rita Rocks” is also a show about family. Rita is married to Jay, played by Richard Ruccolo of “Two guys and a Girl” and they have two daughters: a rebellious teenager, Hallie (played by Natalie Dreyfuss) and a cute 9-year-old girl, Shannon (Kelly Gould).

Directed by Andrew D. Weyman and written by Stan Zimmerman and James Berg, who have written for shows from “The Golden Girls” to “Gilmore Girls,” the show is not for family, but it has something familiar with other sitcoms, a disturbing element that makes it somehow repetitive and boring. The sitcom has at least one detail (or more) that just doesn’t fit. As an example, when she was younger, as she confessed, Sullivan “had the worst taste in music” and guitar was definitely not among her favourite instruments.

Another element of the show is the idea of friendship, an unusual friendship between a Caucasian and an African-American woman with different life stories: one is divorced and has a child, the other is married and has two daughters. Tisha Campbell-Martin plays Patty, Rita’s best friend.

The first five episodes of the comedy will run tonight through Friday after “Reba,” Lifetime’s No.1 show.

Nicole Sullivan is best known for her starring role in the sketch comedy show, “Mad TV” (1995), a show that became a big hit. Sullivan guest-starred on shows like “Family Guy” (1999), “Suddenly Susan” (1996) and “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” (1999). In 2001 Sullivan left “Mad TV” and starred in several television movies: “The King of Queens,” “Clone High” (2002) and “Kim Possible.”