CUT TO BLACK SITCOM STAR CHRISTOPHER TITUS KNOWS THE DARK SIDE OF HUMOR.

Byline: David Kronke Television Writer

When Christopher Titus says, ``I have an ability to make evil funny; the darkest side of human nature, I can make funny,'' he's not making some random boast. It's a simple statement of fact - and a warning to the squeamish. Those who like their comedy light-hearted, who tune into sitcoms for their silly escapism, are advised to find another story - maybe those soap-opera synopses further back in this section, although they're kind of twisted, too. Anyway, good luck.

We're sitting with Christopher Titus in his Canoga Park dining and living room - as in many working-class homes, they sort of spill into one another; out back, he has built himself a skateboarding half-pipe - as the 35-year-old comedian tells his life story. He distilled his travails into a one-man show, ``Norman Rockwell Is Bleeding,'' in 1998, which in turn was subsequently transformed into Fox's sitcom premiering Monday night, ``Titus.''

His is a family that makes the word ``dysfunctional'' seem puny by comparison:

--Titus' oft-institutionalized mother relinquished control of him to her husband when he was 3, eventually committing suicide in 1994. She also shot and killed an abusive husband.

--To date, his father has caroused his way through six marriages and four heart attacks and only recently quit boozing when his liver delivered an ultimatum.

--Titus and his wife, Erin, have both caught the other cheating.

Much of this makes its way into the show, and yes, it's a comedy and not a soap opera.

What separates Titus and his relatives from just being another episode of ``Jerry Springer'' is the comic's acute awareness of his surroundings, his instinct for survival and his ability to transform all that pain into comedy that's both shocking and cathartic.

``I'm just a more insightful version of my father,'' Titus says. And part of that insight has helped him process his complicated feelings toward his family. To put together an episode, he jokes, ``We have a big therapy session in the writers' room. They put me under, they dredge up a story from my life and they wake me up.'' Of finding writers who got where the show was coming from, he says, ``It was so easy to find people from screwed-up backgrounds.''

Says Jack Kenny, one of the executive producers of Titus' show, ``One of the things that makes you feel better about all the things that happened to him as a child is that here, you're seeing him in the present and he's fine. He's actually better for it, and he's telling us this story.''

Titus, a tall, lanky, spiky-haired guy in a T-shirt and jeans, thinks viewers will become accustomed to the harsh manner in which the characters in his show treat one another. (In a flashback, Dad, played by Stacy Keach, teaches a young son to swim by flinging him into the lake.) ``If you take an audience to an uncomfortable place, the next laugh is way bigger because they want to get away from that place,'' he explains.

Titus says his mother was a concert pianist with an IQ of 185; why a genius would marry a guy like his father - well, remember, she was crazy, too. ``The weird thing about my dad,'' Titus adds, ``is he's incredibly charming, as badass as he is.''

Even as a child, Titus understood that his situation was unique - the first custody battle over him began at age 3, when the judge asked him which parent he wanted to be with - ``All I knew was, I wanted Hot Wheels,'' Titus says. ``Wasn't there somebody more qualified to answer that question?''

But Titus knows all isn't what it seems. ``I had a friend and I used to go to his house and play ping-pong,'' he recalls. ``He had three sisters and a mom and dad and everyone got along and I remember being in that atmosphere and thinking, 'Gee, this is really neat.' The older I got, one of his sisters went to prison and his mom and dad broke up and I realized, 'Wow, everybody's screwed up.'

``The thing is, their family came apart - they had such a normal life, they came apart,'' he continues, ``and my family is so screwed up all the time that we still get together at Thanksgiving. We still fight, but at least we all get together.''

Titus takes pains to underscore the fact that his father was, for all his faults, a responsible man concerned about his family; the only prolonged pause in the conversation comes when Titus is asked if his father realizes how scarring his behavior actually was.

``Dad has a sense,'' he says deliberately. ``About three weeks ago, he said to me, 'When you're an adult, you're trying to pay the bills and you're doing everything you can to make sure your kid doesn't die. I did things the way I did them, but I didn't realize how you saw it.' So I look back now and I see he was doing his best.''

That said, here's some of the dirt. ``In the middle of the night, Dad and this lady got in this car and they were driving and it was foggy and she was 'servicing' Pop and he lost control and took out a Cadillac. Now, we all knew something was wrong, because Dad drove 70,000 miles a year and he never had an accident, ever. So we were all, 'Dad, what happened?' And he was, 'Ah, it was the, uh, curve - er, ice!' Two years later he let me know what it was. I guess he figured the statute of limitations had run out.'' Yes, that will be in another episode.

Titus says his father is ``worried that people are going to perceive him as just a bad guy.'' On the other hand, his son just bought him a sports utility vehicle, which might help assuage the image problem.

And what of his wife, Erin? Their dual betrayals are also grist for an episode. ``The breakup was very painful for me, that whole week was horrible,'' says Erin. ``It's hard to go through it again on the show, because it's so word-for-word sometimes. But it's fun. I have to be careful. When we're fighting, instead of saying what I want to say, I'll take the high road because I know if I do something, he'll say, 'That's going on the show!' ''

She laughs, and her husband jokes back, ``You're gonna kill the show that way.''

On the other hand, she can chalk up any indiscretion to providing material for the show. Titus warms to that idea: ``We have this huge fight, she says, 'Hey, the writing was getting weak, I had to do something. I slept with that guy because you needed another episode.' ''

``I did it for you, sweetheart,'' says Erin, mock-sweetly. If anything, she's even more perky than Cynthia Watros, the actress portraying her on the show.

All this merriment may never have come about - Titus almost left the business a few years back. Before he made his family his act, Titus was a successful but standard-issue observational comic.

``I got sick of comedy,'' he says. ``I wanted to quit. I called it a tumor growing on my soul - I just didn't like what I was doing.'' That he was in the middle of a TV development deal that was going nowhere didn't make things any easier.

``I had written this bit about my mom, about her mental illness, that was a great bit, but I did it in the old style.'' He imitates a slick, glib comic: ``Hey, how many people's moms are in a mental hospital?'' His manager was so nonplussed by the routine, he asked his client: 'Are you evil?' But he also encouraged him to pursue the darker sensibility.

``I told him audiences wouldn't buy me as 'me,' and I wrote this bit called 'We Need Comedy to Get Rid of Our Desire to Kill' to show him it wouldn't work. I wrote it that night, and I was up till 4 in the morning writing it. I launched into this piece about the worst day you could have and at the end of this piece, I'm stabbing my boss in the chest and screaming at the top of my lungs, 'I just need a good laugh!' I knew it wouldn't work, I just knew it - and when I did it, the audience went nuts, they were, ``Yeahhh!' '' And Christopher Titus, Dysfunctional Comic, was born.

A month after his mother's suicide, Titus, who had dealt with his loss coolly and dispassionately, was on a plane en route to a gig when the meal - Thanksgiving turkey - summoned a rush of memories of his mother at her finest, serving up her lavish holiday dinners.

``Everything came out at one time on this plane, 30,000 feet in the air,'' he remembers. ``And I jumped out of my seat and ran to the bathroom, and I bawled for 50 minutes. And then, I came out and I was fine and I had dealt with it and I had blown it out. I was sad that she wasn't around because she was brilliant, and I get to my seat and pulled out a magazine, a Newsweek, and I'm flipping though it, and there's this headline that reads, 'Mental Illness: Genetic?'

``And I start laughing hysterically. And people are looking at me - 'Wasn't that the guy who was just crying in the bathroom?' They're all holding their luggage closer to them. For two years after I read that article, I thought that at any moment I was going to pick up a fork and stab somebody in the chest.''

Fears of going bonkers have been quelled these days.

``I think I keep too busy,'' he answers. ``I have a skateboard ramp. I go snowboarding. I keep very busy so I don't have to think about it. I'm going to keep so busy that if I do go insane, I won't notice.''

THE FACTS

--The show: "Titus."

--The stars: Christopher Titus, Stacy Keach, Cynthia Watros, Zack Ward.

--Where: Fox.

--When: 8:30 p.m. Mondays.

MIDSEASON REPLACEMENTS

New and returning series coming up in the next few weeks as midseason replacements:

Tuesday: ``The Beat'' (new cop series on UPN).

Wednesday: ``Then Came You'' (ABC pulled this comedy about an older woman and a younger man at the last minute on its fall schedule).

Thursday: ``Daddio'' and ``Battery Park'' (two new comedy series on NBC).

March 27: ``Dick & Paula'' (returning animated series on fX from the guy who did Dr. Katz).

March 30: `` Wonderland'' (series about a mental hospital, ABC).

CAPTION(S):

3 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) MR. TITUS' wild ride

Canoga Park comedian turns his dysfunctional family into Fox series.

Evan Yee/Staff Photographer

(2) no caption (Christopher Titus closeup)

(3) Christopher Titus: ``I keep very busy so I don't have to think about it. I'm going to keep so busy that if I do go insane, I won't notice.''

Box: MIDSEASON REPLACEMENTS (See text)