Review: Nicole Kidman has a ball with Lucy in the fitfully effective 'Being the Ricardos'

For the better part of six astoundingly successful seasons, Lucy and Ricky Ricardo's apartment was one of the most comforting places in America. I should say apartments; for a few years they lived on the fourth floor of a Manhattan brownstone, only to move into bigger, brighter third-floor digs in preparation for the arrival of their baby son. You never knew what Lucy, Ricky, Fred and Ethel were going to get up to in those spaces: quarrels and sing-alongs, bridge games and food fights, ridiculous stunts that would leave the living room strewn with trash, pillow feathers and even barnyard animals. The more, the merrier: For millions of viewers and the many more who grew up on reruns, the Ricardos' home was home.

You see that home often in the glibly entertaining behind-the-scenes drama "Being the Ricardos," mostly in the background of the Desilu Productions soundstage where Lucille Ball (Nicole Kidman) and her husband, Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem), spend hours