Entertainment

How can I leave You if you won’t go away

TIED UP: Divorced couples forced to keep living together is no longer uncommon, says a new series called “Chained To My Ex.” (Alamy)

If you’re not here to read this review because today’s scheduled apocalypse hit while you were having coffee this morning, well, aren’t you the lucky one?

After watching “Chained To My Ex,” the new docu-reality show from the guy who invented “Intervention” and his collaborator, Matt Ritter — a guy who should have been in intervention after living with his divorced parents in Plainview, Long Island — I decided it’s better to face Armageddon than to live with an ex. “It was horrible,” Ritter says of living with his divorced parents. Horrible but fairly common.

So Ritter’s harrowing, occasionally funny show on MSNBC, of all places, follows ex-couples who, for financial and sometimes weird emotional reasons, are forced to continue living together after they’ve divorced.

No, it’s not like they can’t stay away from each other. They mostly can’t stand each other.

Instead of a marriage counselor, this show features a family court judge and ex-divorce attorney, Michelle Lowrance, who’s paid by MSNBC to negotiate terms.

Lowrance defies the female advice-giver TV stereotype by offering practical advice without the loud and nasty voices we’ve come to know and loathe.

Each episode features one miserable couple, starting with Cece and Christian.

Cece, 40, holds down a full-time job in film financing and works part-time as a hand model and actress.

Christian “makes art with writing, photography, film and food.” In other words he hasn’t worked since Jesus walked the earth.

The fact that Christian is also a dead ringer for Danny Aiello — with a dye job only the “Mob Wives” could admire — is another story altogether.

Even though meek Cece pays all the bills, and they live in a small, first-floor apartment in Sherman Oaks, Calif., both are too attached to their bland month-to-month rental to leave.

Well, he’s actually attached to her and doesn’t have any clue of how to support himself, probably because he lived with his mother until she died — when he was 42.

In no uncertain terms, the judge tells them how easy it is to move away from one another. They don’t listen.

Me? I would have kicked his sorry ass out years ago. But despite the divorce, Cece feels bad and is totally manipulated by him. Luckily for her, she has a friend, Reba, who is fantastically tough, and tells Christian to get the hell out of her way because she’s moving Cece out and that’s that.

Upcoming episodes are tougher to take. There’s one couple with a 2-year-old who are out of money and fight constantly in front of the kid.

Worse, despite being in the middle of a divorce, the wife gets pregnant.

Another couple from Gulfport, La. are, well, too weird for words. Suffice it to say he smells and staples his cut hands with an industrial stapler. What does she do? She’s a chef. Stay away from that kitchen, baby.

Oh, and as for Ritter?

Eventually, his mother moved in with his gramother in Roslyn, and his father married a Brazilian woman who — get this! — still lives in Brazil while he lives in Queens.

He’ll never get caught like that again.