UNREAL PROGRAMMING SCI FI HAS ITS OWN PLAN FOR MUST-SEE THURSDAY.

Byline: David Kronke Television Critic

NOT MANY cable channels would try to develop an evening of original programming on Thursday nights in competition with the entertainment juggernauts established by CBS (with ``Survivor: All-Stars,'' ``CSI'' and ``Without a Trace'') and NBC (``Friends' '' final episodes, ``The Apprentice'' and ``ER''). But Sci Fi, bless 'em, is by its very nature a network that defies conventional thinking.

Its new Thursday lineup is willfully eccentric (except for ``Scare Tactics,'' a fairly dumb ``Candid Camera'' hybrid that begins a new season at 10 p.m. Thursday). It boasts the most surreal reality show to date - and, given the nature of reality programming these days, that's saying something - as well as a computer-animated series that couches its genuine cleverness in some conventionally dopey scripting.

``Mad Mad House'' is an over-the-top goof in the form of a provocation, a prank, or both. Its contestants (who are so humdrum Sci Fi doesn't even bother to list them in its press materials) are plopped into a gothic home populated by ``alts'' - willfully bizarre characters who have embraced cultish lifestyles. ``We are the five 'alts' - this is our house, and we rule,'' they explain to their gape-jawed guests.

Our hosts - who vote the participants out of the house - include a self- proclaimed vampire, witch, voodoo priestess, modern primitive, and naturalist named Avocado, who explains, ``I eat only raw food because the animals in nature eat only raw food.'' (Animals in nature also eat one another, which gives one pause to ponder where he stands on that issue.)

The ``alts,'' needless to say, are intriguing; the contestants aren't. ``I like to be the center of attention,'' one declares. Doesn't every reality contestant say this? Another proclaims, ``I tend to be the life of the party.'' Doesn't every reality contestant say that, too?

Well, those folks are about to discover how drearily conventional they really are. Producers Arthur Smith and Kent Weed tip their hand early in terms of revealing the artificial conflict they're introducing to the proceedings - many of the contestants are baldly and proudly conservative and/or religious, so, naturally, their responses to their hosts' lifestyle choices will be somewhat confrontational. But they also create fairly uninspired contests that even ``Fear Factor'' would've rejected after its first season. They might've done well to jettison the contestants altogether and depict life among the ``alts'' a la ``The Surreal World'' and its ilk. (Imagine the vampire at breakfast: ``Who drank my blood?'')

Still, where else would you hear lines like, ``Kelly was really upset after the bloodbath - I'm not sure this is the right place for her,'' or ``I did become possessed during the ceremony,'' without a trace of irony? And the manner in which the ``alts'' deconstruct the participants is hilarious.

``Mad Mad House,'' like Fox's recent ``The Littlest Groom,'' wants it both ways - it wants, ostensibly, to present its subjects sensitively while secretly grooving to the whole eccentric gestalt. Still, it's reality TV on such a Bizzaro-World scale that viewers will suspect that if they don't watch, they'll miss something out of this world.

``Tripping the Rift,'' on the other hand, conceals its eccentric heart behind standard-issue babes-and-creeps gags. The series, whose title is so awful it sounds like a bad translation from some foreign cable-access program, cribs, inauspiciously enough, from two ill-fated Fox series - the short-lived ``Firefly,'' about intergalactic smugglers, and Matt Groening's ``Futurama,'' which boasted a clever idea in its anarchic explication of sci-fi cliches yet never quite realized its potential.

``Rift'' concerns the goofy creeps who populate the starship Free Enterprise, whose chief business is smuggling. There are cantankerous and cynical aliens and officious robots, including a no-nonsense cyborg hooker. The visuals are cute and clever enough, with homages aplenty to classic science-fiction properties; the punch lines tend toward the obvious.

And yet the first episode takes on the biggest of issues - God, and his contribution to the concept of evil among his creations - in a pretty amusing and provocative fashion. ``Tripping the Rift'' could go either way - it could fizzle or become a cult must-see. Here's hoping the creative brain trust is inventive enough to produce the latter result.

David Kronke, [phone]

david.kronke(at)dailynews.com

MAD MAD HOUSE - Two and one half stars

What: Reality series placing ostensibly normal contestants in a house with cultish oddballs like a vampire, a voodoo priestess, a witch and a modern primitive.

Where: Sci Fi.

When: 9 p.m. Thursday.

In a nutshell: Kind of a dumb competition, but it can be amusing to see how the other half - well, OK, the other one-one-hundredth of 1 percent - of the population lives.

TRIPPING THE RIFT - Three stars

What: ``Firefly'' meets ``Futurama'': Computer-animated comedy about the alien and robotic denizens of the Free Enterprise, a spaceship dedicated to no good.

Where: Sci Fi.

When: 10:30 p.m. Thursday.

In a nutshell: Some clever ideas are tucked into otherwise conventionally scripted comedy with inventive enough visuals. A cult item in the making.

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``Tripping the Rift'' follows a spaceship crew of smugglers from many species on its intergalactic adventures.