TV REVIEW : CBS TURNS TO CANADA FOR LATE-NIGHT SERIES

CBS, which normally relies on reruns of police shows and detective series to compete in the 11:30 p.m. time slot against NBC’s Johnny Carson and ABC’s Ted Koppel, is trying something different tonight: a police show that isn’t a rerun.

Whoopee. Just what we needed.

The series is “Night Heat,” made in Canada and starring Scott Hylands and Jeff Wincott as a couple of dour-faced detectives working the night shift. As depicted in the premiere, it qualifies as the Yawn Patrol. The only comic relief is in the prose of the show’s narrator, a pro-police newspaper columnist (Allan Royal) who mixes the styles of Joseph Wambaugh and Joe Friday.

The style of the rest of the script is not nearly so colorful, having apparently been written largely from the inkwell labeled macho. After Hylands and his wife are nearly gunned down by a madman, she complains, “We were almost killed!” His consolation: “We weren’t.”

Let’s hear it for reruns.