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For the record, I am younger than the three main characters on the TNT comedy-drama Men of a Certain Age – but not by enough to matter. Weeks ago my wife mentioned that she wanted to watch the premiere and asked if I wanted to join her. I declined, having read Alessandra Stanley’s article about the show in the New York Times, in which she referred to the characters as “losers.” Just what I needed: to watch this show, recognize myself in these men of a certain age, and stand condemned — by implication – as a loser in the eys of the obviously all-knowing Times.

Well, so, I wandered into the bedroom while my wife was watching, and I ended up watching. And then we watched the next week, and the week after that. I found myself entertained, even charmed. The three protagonists, friends from college, are decidedly ordinary, decent guys: Ray Romano’s character owns and runs a party-goods store, Andre Braugher’s sells cars, and Scott Bakula’s plays an underemployed actor who supports himself by temping. (I guess what makes them losers is that none of them writes for a major metropolitan newspaper. Get a life, Ms. Stanley.)

To be sure, they have issues. Romano’s character’s gambling has cost him his marriage; Braugher’s has spent his life under the thumb of his blowhard, know-it-all father (who is also his boss); and Bakula’s is a 49-year-old who, in terms of his professional accomplishments and ability to commit to a woman, might as well be 19. But the actors are so good, and their characters played so sympathetically, that rather than looking down on them we pull for them to win out over their difficulties — which, to our delight and the show’s salvation, they occasionally do. Their victories are not major life accomplishments; mostly they amount to breaking even. Romano, who sometimes goes hilariously off the rails when trying to give advice to his children, finds his eloquence when confronting the lovesick teenage boy who won’t leave his daughter alone; Braugher brings his salesmanship to forming a bond with a city bureaucrat, long enough to the power turned back on in his family’s home. When he stands on the city agency’s steps and raises both fists in a parody of the famous scene from Rocky, we laugh with him, not at him.

Some minor quibbles: Braugher’s character, Owen, is 48, but his father doesn’t look older than 62 (the actor who plays him, Richard Gant, is 65); the youngest of Owen’s three children is shown in a high chair. Owen might be 38, but 48? As for Terry, played by Bakula, he is (at least for me) a little harder to root for, maybe because — unlike Joe (Romano) or Owen — he does not have significant others to reveal his various dimensions; his closest relationships seem to be with Joe and Owen, whom he banters with over coffee.

On the up side: is Braugher the odd man out because he plays the only black character? Or is it Romano, because he’s divorced and has an addiction? Or is it Bakula, because he has no kids? The answer, of course, is none of the above. They’re all odd, and they’re all normal, because normal, the show lets us know, is simply what happens in your life.