TV skittish about letting lesbians out of the closet

The number of well-known Hollywood actresses who are openly gay is so small you could fit them, pardon the expression, in a closet.

This month, comic Wanda Sykes boldly added herself to the list - motivated, she said at a rally in Las Vegas, by the passage of Proposition 8, which outlawed gay marriage in California.

Among the unions threatened by that development in the state, where same-sex marriages had for a short time been legal, is Sykes’ to another woman, who has not been identified in the mainstream media.

The news that Sykes had wed a female partner gave an extra comic kick to a recent episode of “The New Adventures of Old Christine” (7 p.m. Wednesdays, CBS), in which Sykes co-stars as Barb, the cynical, acerbic best friend of Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ title character.

In the episode, which aired right around the time of Sykes’ October wedding, Barb and Christine - both of them practicing heterosexuals - get married in order to protect the immigration status of Barb, who was born in the Bahamas. The characters make it clear it’s a marriage in name only.

Still, it makes me wonder: With Sykes out of the closet, could it be time for Barb to emerge from it, too?

If you’ve watched the show, maybe you’ve noticed that there’s a pronounced lack of chemistry between Barb and the men she’s dated. Despite the character’s lusty lines, she appears to be going through the motions, and going through them awkwardly at that.

The awkwardness reminds me of the bad old days of “Ellen,” the sitcom that kept trying to make a straight woman out of Ellen DeGeneres before her own famous coming-out. Her character’s relationships with men, like Barb’s, generally had less sexual tension than the average car commercial.

Maybe I’m treading on dangerous ground here, suggesting that a lesbian actress can’t convincingly impersonate a straight character.

But the problem is more specific than that. Sykes, like DeGeneres - and for that matter, like Jerry Seinfeld and lots of other sitcom stars - is less a skilled character actor than a stand-up who essentially plays some version of herself. She did the same thing, less than successfully, in her own short-lived sitcom of 2003, “Wanda at Large,” which also cast her as a single woman with an eye out for guys.

I suspect that Sykes, who’s always been much funnier as a stand-up than an actress - even in her best TV part to date, as Larry David’s irascible neighbor on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” - might shine if she had a chance to play a character closer to her own heart.

But it’s hard to say whether that will ever happen. For all its supposed liberality, TV is pretty skittish about lesbians, on and off the screen.

It likes its girl-on-girl action hot and soapy, as in Showtime’s “The L-Word.” A less glamorous, more down-to-earth approach - the approach taken in the final, low-rated, post-coming-out season of “Ellen,” say - risks being labeled preachy, boring or worse.

Is old Christine ready for a sexually reawakened, woman-loving, out-of-the-closet best friend? I hope so, because old Barb could use some new adventures.