Back when I was a tween-ager -- well, I never was a tween-ager, because back then the word hadn't been invented. Nor were there shows designed for that demographic, not until "The Facts of Life" and "Saved by the Bell."

"Hannah Montana," which bowed Friday night on Disney Channel, is not the finest of its kind, but it's a solid little sitcom that will help move a lot of units when 13-year-old star Miley Cyrus starts fulfilling that recording contract she's also been signed to.

Cyrus plays a girl (also named Miley) who leads a double life as an ordinary middle-schooler and a pop teen sensation along the line of Britney/Lindsay/Hilary etc. She is the biggest thing since, I don't know, scrunchies. As is absolutely allowable in a piece as heedless of reality as this, she assumes her fabulous other identity simply by wearing a blonde wig -- upon donning it she is unrecognizable to even her closest friends.

Miley, who was in Tim Burton's "Big Fish," is a relative newcomer who seems a talented amateur -- that is to say, not quite a professional, which is not necessarily a bad thing in young actors. But she has definite comedy chops and a throaty voice that makes her appear more mature and solid than she is.

And its theme, after all, is hysteria: It lampoons fandom and pop-cultural obsession even as it revels in it -- and retails it. Disney is, of course, knee-deep in this muck, the '90s-brand "Mickey Mouse Club" having been the primordial soup that bred Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake, while Hilary Duff was the network's "Lizzie McGuire."

Rendered in colors of an almost sickening intensity, and offering a soundstage Malibu so tropical you expect Gilligan to come bumbling through, the show also features Mitchel Musso as another close friend, obsessed with Hannah.

Jason Earles plays her clueless older brother, amusingly. There are the usual stuck-up snobby girls at school and, surprisingly, a bit of camp humor surrounding Miley's personal fashion designer and a couple jokes involving . . . well, if they can say "poopy" on Disney Channel, I guess I can write it here.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page B3.