'BEAT'-NIX; 'HOMICIDE' CREATOR MEETS UPN.

Byline: David Kronke TV Critic

Here's a grudge match for the week. In this corner, executive producer Tom Fontana (who has given us ``Homicide: Life on the Street'' and ``Oz'') and his partner, acclaimed filmmaker Barry Levinson (``Bugsy,'' ``Tin Men''). In the far corner, UPN, the network that has yet to meet the burping gag it doesn't like.

Mix these opposing sensibilities together and something has to give.

Well, call it a draw. ``The Beat,'' Fontana's UPN cop show, won't be mistaken for a good series, but it's better than a lot of the junk polluting UPN's airwaves. Of course, its sophisticated flourishes may just be enough to sail the show over the heads of the netlet's pubescent target audience, and its pandering touches will be enough to alienate more discerning viewers.

Basically, it's a standard-issue cop show, with Derek Cecil and Mark Ruffalo playing Mike Dorigan and Zane Marinelli, the Reed and Malloy of the attitude-laced '00s (in UPN's honor, let's christen the new decade the Zeroes). For young bucks, their conversations certainly recall their ``Adam-12'' predecessors; there seems to be a blinkered determination to bore us silly.

Fontana's other big aesthetic push seems at least partially motivated by budget. ``The Beat's'' visual scheme wavers back and forth between the slickness of film and the rawness of video. Essentially, character development and dialogue-heavy scenes are shot on film, while the police work - which would include most of the action sequences - are shot on video, which is cheaper; it also makes those scenes look rougher, ostensibly both more ``real'' and ``extreme,'' like an episode of ``Cops.'' (Even Cecil and Ruffalo look more like regular beat officers on video and less like strutting actors.) Scenes that fall somewhere in between - like cute cop banter - vacillate between the different visual approaches.

It's a nice, clever gambit, but it's an endgame unto itself - no one will be impressed 10 episodes in, and the exercise calls attention to itself too much. Besides, a lot of the scenes on video are oversaturated and just plain ugly.

And the individual cases these guys pull - an Asian woman complaining about a ``murdered'' pigeon, a guy channeling Bob Marley in a busy intersection, another guy threatening to jump off a building until he has to urinate - aren't anyone's idea of compelling. An ongoing subplot about race relations between the police and the public promises to travel down a cul de sac, if not narratively then at least in terms of having any sociological impact on the show's audience.

OK, so far, so mediocre. So where does the UPN influence come in?

Glad you asked. It's in the show's constricted and silly attitude toward women. (A particularly UPN-ian subplot in tonight's episode boasts that old standby, the Peeping Tom, with a guy watching a photographer's models in a group grope). The two regular female characters provide a tidy study of the whole Madonna/whore dichotomy, neatly stereotyping the gender for the network's young and impressionable demographic.

One, Mike's fiance Elizabeth (Poppy Montgomery), is training to become a doctor and is concerned about his heavy drinking (Cecil's rather blank performance doesn't suggest his character's darker layers). The other, Zane's girlfriend Beatrice (Heather Burns), is an unhinged tart who trashes his guitar and burns down his apartment, then makes it up to him with some vigorous, bondage-tinged sex. Beatrice is traditionally the kind of character who usually pops up on an episode of a show that's really at a loss for ideas.

But maybe the show doesn't have enduring aspirations. Episode 2 has a gratuitously pointless cameo by Richard Belzer, again playing Detective Munch. Belzer seems intent on making the Guinness Book of World Records for getting his one character on as many different TV series as possible. Too bad UPN's already canceled ``Homeboys From Outer Space''; he'd really rock on that.

THE FACTS

--The show: ``The Beat.''

--What: A cop series alternately shot on film and video.

--The stars: Derek Cecil, Mark Ruffalo, Poppy Montgomery, Heather Burns.

--Where: UPN.

--When: 9 tonight.

--Our rating: Two stars.

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo: Derek Cecil, left, and Mark Ruffalo star in UPN's new cop series shot both on film and video.