LOS ANGELES (AP) – On “Twenty Good Years,” the words “me” and “I” get considerable play, as the two lead characters spat and spar over who has the upper hand in their longtime friendship.

Off-camera, “us” is the key word as veteran actors John Lithgow and Jeffrey Tambor, who play the over-excitable John Mason and the over-reflective Jeffrey Pyne, delight in the new friendship that has been forged on the set of the new NBC sitcom.

They were well-aware of each other’s credits and talents, and often starred in plays at adjacent Broadway theaters or in TV series filmed on the same lot. Yet they had only met briefly before teaming up on this heart-infused farce about aging men trying to relish their golden years.

“Twenty Good Years,” which is filmed in traditional sitcom fashion with four cameras before a live audience, premieres Wednesday at 8:30 p.m.

“Jeffrey and I, we are comic character actors. Usually there’s only room for one of us. It’s sort of an explosive combination putting us together,” Lithgow says, only half-jokingly.

“John is from the theater and I’m from the theater and I just trusted John immediately. If there is such a word as chemistry, it’s about that trust, and I trust him with my comic life,” says Tambor.

As they talk and laugh together, one gets the sense they’re acquiring new knowledge of each other with every moment. The duo are perfecting what Lithgow calls “one of those knotty scenes that takes a lot of work.”

Lithgow as Mason – a self-absorbed, multi-divorced surgeon facing retirement – flamboyantly flings his arms, his hooting voice plump with indignation at some perceived slight. Tambor as Pyne – a self-doubting widowed judge still on the bench – clenches his arms close to his body, words squeezing from his mask-of-tragedy mouth as he worries over minutiae.

“More than about aging, this is really about the art of friendship, and it’s a lost art, especially in this era,” says Tambor.

“They ultimately help each other … they are better together than they are apart.”

“It’s a wonderful idea to build a series around the unlikelihood and yet the absolute indispensability of some friendships,” says Lithgow.

Both actors have previously starred in popular TV comedies. Tambor was nominated four times for an Emmy as talk-show sidekick Hank Kingsley in HBO’s “The Larry Sanders Show,” and he earned two more nominations as larcenous real-estate tycoon, George Bluth Sr., on Fox’s recently canceled “Arrested Development.” Lithgow won three Emmys as the alien college professor, Dr. Dick Soloman, in NBC’s “3rd Rock From the Sun.”

Born in Rochester, N.Y., Lithgow grew up in a theatrical family thinking he did not want to become an actor. He changed his mind during his sophomore year at Harvard when playing King Paramount in Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera “Utopia Limited.”

The audience wouldn’t stop laughing and applauding and “it was during that applause that I decided to be an actor,” Lithgow recalled. “It was like nothing could be more glorious than this, not just the adulation, but being so exhilarated.”

San Francisco-born Tambor grew up in a “wonderful family, but we were of Russian Hungarian heritage and you had to be fast on your feet.”

One day he said something that got a laugh and “it gave me enough time to think, and I remember that moment saying, ‘Ah ha, I can make it, if I can make mom and dad laugh I’ll have a little time to think about the reality of the situation.’ It (being funny) was a survival technique,” Tambor said.

Eliciting laughs is, of course, the main goal for “Twenty Good Years.”

“We are constantly talking about comedy theory in these interviews. I think we are becoming ponderous,” says Lithgow. “Ultimately it’s just funny, but I think funny comes out of pain and melancholy and anxiety. These are two guys who are afraid of growing old. Well, that can either be a drama or a comedy, and if it’s a comedy, the heart of that is there’s no fool like an old fool.”

Tambor chimes in: “When you can’t think of the word it’s painful, on the other hand when you look at it from the outside it’s also very funny. When you open the refrigerator door and see the mail…”

Laughing, they ponder the state of their own lives. Lithgow, 60, married to his second wife, UCLA professor Mary Yeager, has three grown children. Tambor, 62, married to his third wife, actress Kasia Ostlun, has a toddler son just days older than his grandson.

“I tend to think of us as ageless, mainly because I don’t think of myself as 60, I think of myself as about 28 years old and I’m constantly disappointed by this frail body that doesn’t catch up” says Lithgow, not looking at all frail.

“I’m in my 40s,” Tambor laughs.

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On the Net:

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AP-ES-10-09-06 1112EDT