I recently received a link to a YouTube video showing a TV news reporter who comes under some unsanitary bombardment while reporting on a local bird infestation. Crude? You bet. But I laughed. And that’s more than I can say about the new sitcom “Welcome to the Captain” (7:30 p.m., CBS).

The show concerns a Hollywood writer named Josh (Fran Kranz) with writer’s block who moves into an apartment building filled with eccentrics and busybodies.

Josh has annoying friends whom he should have outgrown – or shot – years before. Raquel Welch stars as Charlene, an oversexed and over-the-hill 1970s TV star who seduces Josh on his very first night in the building. The producer’s confidence in Welch’s comedic abilities can be summed up in the fact that this event takes place offscreen.

Jeffrey Tambor stars as a TV writer named Uncle Saul who hasn’t written in four decades because he spends all of his time playing golf (badly) and gossiping about tenants in the Captain, the apartment building that gives this show its name.

The show has some potentially sweet moments, like those between Josh and a budding acupuncturist. But a script that insists on smarmy, adolescent sex jokes overshadows all.

I’m a TV critic, and my beat (and my living) depends on reviewing new programming. So I’m the last guy to steer viewers to YouTube clips about bird droppings. But sometimes even the rudest and most rudimentary clips remind us of what we find fundamentally funny. And none of the Internet clips I have laughed at concern Hollywood writers writing about Hollywood writers not writing.

¢ Speaking of smarmy addresses, welcome to “Paradise Hotel 2” (8 p.m., MYNetwork), a reality show that combines the “hookup” subtlety of “Temptation Island” with the logic of musical chairs. Contestants must couple up or exit.

The original “Hotel” aired on Fox and died rather quickly due to audience indifference. In 2003, I wrote, “‘Paradise Hotel’ might be scandalous if it weren’t so dull.” That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

¢ Mos Def appears in “A Prince Among Slaves” (9 p.m., PBS, check local listings), a true-life first-person account of an African prince taken by slave traders and who endured 40 years as a slave in the American South. The film combines re-enactments with interviews and observations from historians. This serious, well-intentioned effort is more educational than dramatic.