First things first. "Wonderfalls" is not a rip-off of "Joan of Arcadia."
Yes, they're both about young women who receive messages from beyond. Both women have troubled families.
But both shows were developed at the same time — a year ago. Tonight's premiere of "Wonderfalls" (8 p.m., Ch. 13) has been sitting on Fox's shelf almost that long. So any similarities are strictly coincidental.
And, despite the similarities, they're also very different.
"Wonderfalls" centers on 24-year-old underachiever Jaye Tyler (Caroline Dhavernas), a Brown graduate who is working a dead-end job at a Niagara Falls gift shop. She's snarky and snide with a serious superiority complex, but she's thrown for a loop when inanimate objects start talking to her. Starting with a defective lion figurine, various inanimate animals start holding conversations with her and giving her advice.
We're never quite sure whether she's nuts or whether she's getting advice from a higher being, but when she listens, Jaye helps other people solve their problems. And sometimes solves her own problems with her family — her parents (Diana Scarwid and William Sadler), her brother (Lee Pace) and her sister (Katie Finneran). Or maybe with her best friend (Tracie Thomas) or a potential love interest (Tyrone Leitso). But more often the stories are about complete strangers, which sort of wastes a fine regular cast.
The pilot episode shows promise, but the three succeeding episodes provided to critics don't build much on that promise. "Wonderfalls" has a lot going for it, but it's trying a tad too hard to be quirky instead of just letting the quirkiness flow. And Jaye is a tad too downbeat and cynical to make her a character you're rooting for.
Not that it matters much. By scheduling it on Friday at 8 p.m. for the next seven weeks, Fox has virtually assured a quick demise for "Wonderfalls." And Fox Entertainment president Gail Berman's theory that the show can attract the "Joan of Arcadia" crowd when that show ends over on CBS seems, at best, a double-edged sword.
It just makes "Wonderfalls" look more like a "Joan" rip-off. Even though it isn't.
TOUCHING EVIL (7 and 9 p.m., USA): Translating English to American doesn't always work — just look at how NBC mucked up "Coupling" last fall.
But USA has done a darn good job of bringing "Touching Evil" across the Atlantic. The Americanization of this British series is one of this season's better dramas.
Jeffrey Donovan takes over for Robson Green, who played the lead character in the original version. He stars as detective David Creegan, who was shot in the head a year before the series begins and died on the operating table. But after a miraculous recovery, it seems the bullet somehow enhanced his already formidable deductive skills, although it robbed him of both fear and shame.
Creegan is now working for the FBI — specifically, its organized and serial-crime unit, which deals with only the most high-profile cases. In tonight's two-hour premiere, he's on the trail of a brilliant serial kidnapper who snatches children, in part because he revels in outwitting the police.
Creegan is partnered with Agent Susan Branca, who doesn't know quite what to make of him — although there are some sparks between the two.
The two-hour pilot is good. And it shows promise of turning into a show that could mean that, along with "Monk," USA may just have two detective shows worth watching.
PLAYING IT STRAIGHT (7 p.m., Ch. 13): This is the latest permutation on the prime-time dating show — sort of a combination of "The Bachelor" and "Boy Meets Boy," with, perhaps, a bit of "The Price Is Right" thrown in.
The show wasn't previewed for critics, but the premise is fairly simple. Jackie, a gorgeous gal, is presented with 14 hunky guys. Eventually, she must winnow this group down to one.
The twist is that some of the guys are straight and some are gay. She has to figure out who is what. If she ends up picking a straight guy, they split a million bucks. If she picks a gay guy, he walks away with the $1 million prize.
Frankly, this seems more honest than shows like "The Bachelor," "Average Joe" and "Joe Millionaire" because viewers aren't expected to believe these people are looking for love. It's all about the money.
E-mail: pierce@desnews.com