2 Broke Girls' review: Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs have intuitive chemistry in gal-pal sitcom

Here's an easy way to pick out the best new sitcoms on TV this fall: Look for the two with "Girl" in the title. And "2 Broke Girls" (Monday at 9:30, CBS) is one of them.

Like many sitcoms, "2 Broke Girls" stretches a little to set up the premise, but once it gets there we're sold, mainly because the two lead actresses are funny and endearing with great chemistry.

Kat Denning plays Max Black, a career waitress at a funky coffee shop in what is described as a slightly dodgy part of Brooklyn.

After her boss, Han Lee (Matthew Moy), fires the diner's other waitress, a Russian hooker, he hires Caroline Channing, played by Beth Behrs.

Caroline is everything Max is not. She's from the upper East Side and was born with enough silver spoons in her mouth to do service for 12 at a place much fancier than this restaurant.

But Caroline's family lost all its money when a Bernie Madoff-type scam was busted, so Caroline had to flee the house "taking just what I could grab - and I grabbed all the wrong things."

For instance, she now finds herself wearing white after Labor Day.

Her friends won't even answer her texts anymore, so now she's just a broke girl - which drops her right into Max's world.

We also soon learn that both Max and Caroline are smart and sharp. Just when we expect they will say or do one thing, they say or do something smarter and sharper.

So they bond quickly and credibly, which lets the show immediately begin setting up story lines.

When Caroline sees that Max bakes a great red velvet cupcake and sells it for what Caroline considers way too low a price, she starts planning how they can open a cupcake shop.

All they need is $250,000, and by the time the first episode ends, they are only $249,613 short.

Money will be a running theme. So will men. We can assume Caroline will meet a different class of men in her new world. As for Max, well, Caroline notices right away that she has self-esteem issues. That's a good start.

Also starting well is the writing, by Whitney Cummings and Michael Patrick King.

Max to an idiot customer: "I wear knit caps because it's cold. You wear them because of Coldplay."

Caroline to Max's rotten but hunky boyfriend: "Back up, Jersey Shore."

Garrett Morris, who plays Earl the cashier, gets the most incorrect lines. When Caroline is fumbling through her first day, he says: "That girl is working harder than Stephen Hawking trying to put on a pair of cufflinks."

A few scenes get excessive - the horse may not work - but Max and Caroline already fit nicely into the female buddy tradition that runs from Lucy and Ethel through Cagney and Lacey up to Rizzoli and Isles.