AN UPHILL CLIMB; 'HIGHER GROUND' SCALING A MOUNTAIN OF TEEN ANGST.

Byline: David Kronke TV Critic

``Higher Ground,'' the Fox Family Channel's first venture into dramatic series television, has a title with vague religious overtones and is all about redemption yet strives for a tough-minded edge. The cast is cluttered with pretty yet moody, telegenic faces just waiting to break out on the next cover of Teen People.

The show itself reflects such schizophrenic ambitions. It's a more dour ``Welcome Back, Kotter'' for the extreme-sports generation.

Joe Lando, late of ``Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,'' stars as Peter Scarbrow, the head of Mount Horizon, a wilderness camp nestled in a gorgeous pocket of the Pacific Northwest that caters to troubled kids (good kids should rate a camp so nice). He has a past himself, as they say, so is able to relate to his passel of rebellious kids.

The pilot episode introduces us to the camp's latest troubled kid - Scott Barringer (Hayden Christensen), a former high-school football hero who descended into drug use, emotionally wrecked by his lithesome stepmother's furtive enforced dalliances. While being transported to the camp, he's accompanied by a security guard who apparently has never been hipped to the ``climb out the bathroom window at the gas station'' trick, which kills some time before we get to the clump of exposition introducing those at the camp.

Mount Horizon boasts a demographically diverse group of kids - it's interesting how shows aimed at teens and kids, like this and the bulk of programming on Nickelodeon, can manage to have racially diverse casts when adult network fare can't manage the same thing. Shelby (A.J. Cook) is the promiscuous tease. Juliette (Meghan Ory) is bulimic. Ezra (Kyle Downes) is a shy guy who almost overdosed when his parent went through a nasty divorce. Katherine (Kandyse McClure) is conflicted by her racial identity. Auggie (Jorge Vargas) is a dyslexic tagger. Naturally, they're all a lot more sensitive than the tough exteriors they try to show the world.

At Mount Horizon, the kids enjoy lots of adventurous outings - one falls into the rapids and has to be fished out by the others in an action sequence accompanied by the requisite pulsating music - yet Scott is resistant to the place. Why? Why, given any teen-ager's alternative - regular high school and hanging out with their parents - would any kid have a problem with this scenic camp?

Maybe it's Mount Horizon's ground rules - no drugs, sex or violence. And this is a TV series?

Really, there's only so far this series can take us, unless it gets truly daring and tackles headlong abuse and other issues, which lead kids like these to their assorted problems, without whitewashing them. Certainly, younger viewers aren't going to care much about Peter's romantic complications. Unfortunately, the pilot seems to suggest that the show will be content merely to depict Peter as a cool older guy who's into rock climbing and communicating with TV-pretty kids about vague disaffection and shooting the rapids. Which seems more high-concept than ``Higher Ground.''

THE FACTS

--The show: ``Higher Ground.''

--What: Series about the adventures of troubled teens at a rehabilitation camp.

--The stars: Joe Lando, Hayden Christensen, A.J. Cook, Meghan Ory, Kyle Downes, Kandyse McClure, Jorge Vargas.

--Where: Fox Family Channel.

--When: 9 p.m. Friday.

--Our rating: Two and one-half stars

CAPTION(S):

photo, box

Photo: As head of a camp for troubled youths in ``Higher Ground,'' Joe Lando is a mountain-climbing man who has problems of his own.

Box: THE FACTS (see text)