Lifetime’s new series offer something for all> Actresses shine in ‘Oh Baby,’ ‘Any Day Now’

Interested in three new programs about women and their relationships with their families, friends and significant others? Naturally, these series debut tonight on Lifetime, whose motto is “Television for Women.”

Sound a little too warm and fuzzy? In general, “Oh Baby,” “Any Day Now” and “Maggie” avoid the sensitivity trap, and therefore don’t automatically alienate 49 percent of the viewing audience (the men, in simple terms).

The most promising of the three is “Oh Baby,” which airs at 10:30 p.m. The comedy’s strength is the chemistry between two underappreciated, veteran TV actresses, Cynthia Stevenson (“Hope & Gloria,” “Bob”) and Joanna Gleason (“Love and War,” “Temporarily Yours”).

Stevenson plays Tracy, a thirtysomething, single, successful marketing executive. Tracy has been in a three-year relationship with that TV staple, the male commitment-phobe. Desiring a family, she decides to have a baby by herself, through artificial insemination.

Gleason plays her best friend, Charlotte, the company psychiatrist who is also a twice-divorced single mother. Charlotte is the only person in Tracy’s life to support her decision.

“Oh Baby” takes an unusual but effective approach to tell Tracy’s story. She breaks down the fourth wall, talking directly to the viewers, and she shows them a series of scenes from her life on a video monitor.

Stevenson’s Tracy is a sympathetic character many viewers can relate to, a career woman who has waited, nearly too long, for the “right” man with whom to start a family. The big difference is that she’s not willing to hold off any longer.

The drama “Any Day Now,” airing at 9 p.m., also stars a dynamite combination of TV actresses, Annie Potts (“Designing Women,” “Love and War”) and Lorraine Toussaint (“Leaving L.A.,” “Amazing Grace”).

Potts and Toussaint play childhood friends — one white, the other black — from Birmingham who are reunited as adults after having had a falling-out as young adults. Surprisingly, each has taken the other’s childhood choice of life path.

Mary Elizabeth (Potts), a tomboy who dreamed of becoming the first woman major-league baseball player, instead got married young to her childhood sweetheart. She’s now raising two children, a difficult teen daughter and a cooperative younger son. Her husband is out of work, while she’s trying to go back to school and pursue some of the interests she has let slide for years.

Rene (Toussaint), who fantasized about a husband and four kids, is a high-powered Washington lawyer, and is in a relationship with an English professor that’s going nowhere. She returns home for the funeral of her father, a well-known civil rights advocate, and finds herself drawn back to Birmingham.

“Any Day Now” chronicles the rebuilding of Mary Elizabeth and Rene’s fractured relationship. In shades of “I’ll Fly Away,” the show uses flashbacks to their childhood to show the impact of the chaotic events of the late 1960s on their lives.

The opener was more than a little poky, a result of all the flashbacks necessary to establish the pair’s relationship. Still, it shows great promise for the episodes to come.

At 10 p.m., the comedy “Maggie,” starring Ann Cusack (“The Jeff Foxworthy Show”), is the story of an invisible woman.

Maggie Day is a married woman on the verge of a midlife crisis as she hits 40. She’s having fantasies about actor Jack Wagner of “Melrose Place,” and finds herself torn between her career-driven cardiologist husband (played by John Getz) and a charming, often antic veterinarian (John Slattery) at the animal clinic where she works part time.

Maggie tells her life story to her therapist, using flashbacks and fantasy sequences. The problem is that Maggie isn’t an interesting enough character for viewers to care about her life’s dilemmas. She comes off as whiny far too often.

So, give Lifetime credit for trying to give viewers (especially women) characters to whom they can relate. Now, the women of “Oh Baby,” “Any Day Now” and “Maggie” have to prove they are three-dimensional enough to bring people back week after week.