CRIME SHOWS PUSH DEPRAVITY ENVELOPE.

Byline: David Kronke TV Critic

HOLLYWOOD screenwriters likely have created more rapists and murderers with bizarre fetishes than all the mothers in America.

While you might understand the scribes' motivations - absent eye-popping evil (sometimes literally, as we shall soon see), such stories can also seem just another cat-and-mouse crime melodrama.

But you have to wonder about the creators of TV series that introduce themselves to viewers with yarns victimizing women in spectacularly lurid fashion. Two new crime procedurals debut tonight and Friday focusing on brutal atrocities that right-thinking people would find repellent but are, instead, posited as entertainment.

CBS' ``Criminal Minds'' tonight investigates an ``anger-excitation rapist'' who murders his prey for good measure. Fox's ``Killer Instinct'' debuts tomorrow with a kinky premise - a man who sends exotic spiders into women's homes to paralyze them before their rapes and murders.

We're having some fun now, no?

``We're gearing these crimes to almost be popcorn-ish,'' Fox Entertainment president Peter Liguori recently explained of his new series. ``The intent is to create creative, fun crimes,'' he added, while magnanimously allowing that rape and murder don't exactly fall under the rubric of ``fun.''

``Fun'' isn't the first word that comes to mind with ``Criminal Minds,'' either. When we first meet lead character FBI Special Agent Jason Gideon (Mandy Patinkin), who specializes in criminal profiling, we learn that his job, getting inside the heads of twisted killers, almost drove him mad. He still spooks colleagues, who are unsure of whether he's ready to resume his duties.

Ready or not, here he comes - the latest in a series of abductions has occurred, and he must find those responsible for a string of rapes and murders. In each, the victim is bound and gagged, her eyes wrapped in duct tape (depicted in grisly close-ups). The perpetrator keeps his victims alive for a week to heighten their terror and, more conveniently, give our heroes a chance to rescue the latest abductee.

Gideon's team includes a young nerdy genius with an IQ of 187 (Matthew Gray Gubler) and a colleague who knows him best. Like Robert Sean Leonard's character on ``House,'' the latter is the only one who can point up his superior's inferiorities (played by Thomas Gibson, who even looks like his ``House'' counterpart).

Next week, Gideon and company seek a spiritually ardent arsonist. ``Criminal Minds'' is a competent crime procedural in a prime-time world already way too rife with them. One difference is that, amid the carnage, Patinkin's lofty voice-overs cite epigrams from philosophers and statesmen. But he hasn't yet quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson, who declared, ``Pretension never feigned an act of real greatness.''

While ``Criminal Minds'' justifies its seediness with pseudo-philosophizing, Fox's ``Killer Instinct'' is content to go for the jugular. Johnny Messner is incongruously asked to be both soulful and hard-core as Detective Jack Hale - when he whips off his sunglasses at a crime scene, he looks like no cop you've ever seen but precisely like every actor you've ever seen playing to the camera. (No one here is remotely credible as a cop.)

Hale, like Gideon, is returning to his debilitating job after an extended leave - chasing the sickest of the sick recently cost him a partner, both professionally and romantically. In Friday's debut, he steps into the web of intrigue created by the aforementioned spider-killer (both shows feature similar plot twists). Next week, Hale pursues a killer who literally plucked the eyes from a young female victim (and barbecued another victim's liver on a grill).

Such sordid behavior might be forgiven if plotting were sensible. But it's quite likely you'll be several steps ahead of ``Killer Instinct's'' ostensibly elite team. Minutes after you wonder, ``Did the victim issue any restraining orders?'' that thought just might occur to Hale and his colleagues.

Likewise, hours after you ask, ``Shouldn't Fox have found a better show?'' network president Liguori will be asking himself the same question.

David Kronke, [phone]

david.kronke(at)dailynews.com

CRIMINAL MINDS - Two and one half stars

What: FBI profilers (led by Mandy Patinkin) pursue serial killers during crime sprees.

Where: CBS (Channel 2).

When: 10 tonight; thereafter, 9 p.m. Wednesdays.

In a nutshell: Competent crime procedural with a taste for the lurid.

KILLER INSTINCT - Two stars

What: San Francisco's ``Deviant Crime Unit'' chases psychopaths.

Where: Fox (Channel 11).

When: 9 p.m. Friday.

In a nutshell: Sicko behavior; tough-guy posturing.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- 2) Thomas Gibson, left, and Mandy Patinkin try to get inside the heads of serial killers in ``Criminal Minds'' on CBS, and Johnny Messner, right, stars as a detective chasing down the dregs of society in Fox's ``Killer Instinct.''