CRIT-O-MATIC.

Byline: - David Kronke

``Medium''

(NBC Channel 4; 10 tonight)

Logline: Patricia Arquette takes a page from the Haley Joel Osment playbook and sees dead people. The actress (``Flirting With Disaster'') stars as Allison DuBois, an Arizona psychic whose visions help divine murderers, but doesn't know when her family has already had dinner. Based on a real person (who serves as a consultant on the show), the series comes courtesy of creator Glenn Gordon Caron (``Moonlighting'') and executive producer Kelsey Grammer.

Pros: It's executed with more intelligent whimsy than one might expect from material this obviously manipulative. The dialogue is crisp and Jake Weber is nicely understated as Allison's ``thankless'' husband.

Cons: Arliss Howard has a nice turn as a skeptical Texas Ranger in tonight's premiere episode; too bad he's not a series regular. Arquette is a little blank, which only works well about half the time. And, there's the small matter of it being a pretty silly premise (won't she always know when someone is lying, when someone is luring her into peril?). The dream sequences that open each episode tend to be loopy.

In a nutshell: Caron and Arquette may make believers of skeptics. But we should probably ask the real-life DuBois of this show's chances of success.

Our rating: Three stars

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ARQUETTE