THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE SIMILAR

And away we go.

The good news is that television has shed the “vast wasteland” label that Federal Communications Commission chairman Newton Minow gave it in 1961. The rotten news is that 25 years later, despite a brave new world of gleaming high tech, TV is now a vast Goodyear blimp, gray, slow-turning and full of hot gas.

I’m not suggesting that the small screen isn’t better now than in 1961 or during the overrated earlier “Golden Age of Television.” Although the cable and VCR revolutions have dramatically altered the way we watch TV, they’ve caused little fundamental change in what we watch.

Although cable, videos and expanding off-network first-run programs have chipped away at the audiences of NBC, CBS and ABC, TV isn’t essentially different or more exciting or more diverse. There are now merely more sources for the same types of programs.

Really, now, just how revolutionary is a prospective Fox Broadcasting Co. fourth network whose centerpiece is Joan Rivers? Can we talk? What’s bold about independent stations running “The New Dating Game” or “The New Gidget”? And what’s wondrous about such first-run cable as USA Network’s sitcom from Paramount called--are you ready?--”Sanchez of Bel Air”? A nouveau riche Latino family from the barrio invades status-crazy Bel-Air and--as they say in Hollywood--the high jinks begin.

Back at The Big Factory, meanwhile, CBS and ABC are now chasing NBC, each seeking a “Cosby Show” Moses of its own to lead the way to the promised land of Nielsens. That means familiar terrain.

Not that good work isn’t possible each new season, even within the rigid confines of a system far less intent on delivering programs to viewers than viewers to advertisers. Based on sample episodes provided by the networks, NBC’s exciting “L.A. Law” is far and away the class of the class in 1986-87. NBC’s “Our House” is a distant second, followed by “The Wizard” on CBS.

The season’s 23 new series (premiering over the next few weeks) yield no trends, only extensions and continuations. There are more series with family settings and more leading roles for women. There are seven new series predicated on move-ins, people being plopped into alien environments as a facile way of creating conflict. There are also more sound-alike titles.

For example, the arriving “Sledge Hammer” is unrelated to the returning “Mickey Spillane’s New Mike Hammer.” There’s an “Our World” as well as an “Our House” this season. There was an “Our Kind of Town,” before it was retitled “Jack & Mike,” and a “Taking the Town,” before it was renamed “My Sister Sam.” There’s still a “Downtown” and a “Heart of the City” and “Easy Street,” and there used to be “The Wizard of Elm Street” before it was shortened to “The Wizard.”

Speaking of wizards, you’ll find no predictions here. Capsulizing each new series based on a single episode is merely perilous (it was yours truly who initially rapped “Moonlighting,” “St. Elsewhere” and even “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”), forecasting ratings suicidal. I haven’t done it since 1979 when I cockily predicted that “The Dukes of Hazzard” would be immediately hooted off CBS. It stayed five years.

SUNDAY --”Our House,” drama, NBC, 7 p.m. CBS has owned Sundays. In a bold programming move, though, NBC is counterprogramming one of its most creatively promising newcomers opposite powerhouse “60 Minutes.”

Warm, gentle, thoughtful, “Our House” stars stoical Wilford Brimley (“Cocoon”) as a grandfather whose life is dramatically changed when his widowed daughter-in-law (Deidre Hall) and her three kids and their dog come to live with him. What seems corny on paper, though, is highly appealing on the screen. Some of the pilot episode’s minor characters are overdrawn, but the cast is good and Brimley is a wonderful gramps, adjusting to his chaotic new life with grumpy resolve. “You don’t need all this crap,” his daughter-in-law tells him. “Don’t worry about that,” he replies. “At my age, I’m crap-proof.”

--”Easy Street,” comedy, NBC, 8 p.m. NBC isn’t bozo-proof, though, witness this comedy with Loni Anderson (“WKRP in Cincinnati”) playing a wealthy widow and former showgirl who brings her seedy Uncle Bully and his seedy friend to live with her in a Beverly Hills estate. Uh, sure. Even that grand farceur Jack Elam as Uncle Bully can’t wring laughs from hokum that includes a scene where people stick spoons up their noses. This whole series may have a spoon up its . . . nose.

MONDAY --”ALF,” comedy, NBC, 8 p.m. A Muppet-like alien is stranded on Earth with a typical sitcom family that tries to hide his existence from other Earthlings. Fortunately for viewers, ALF (Alien Life Force) speaks English. Unfortunately, nothing he speaks is worth hearing.

Max Wright, such a howl as the station manager in “Buffalo Bill,” offers nothing as the patriarch of yet another zany TV family. “Have we learned nothing from watching ‘The Cosby Show?’ ” he asks his chaotic brood. The answer is excruciatingly obvious.

--”My Sister Sam,” comedy, CBS, 8:30 p.m. On the pilot episode shown critics, 16-year-old Patti, played by Rebecca Schaeffer, causes havoc by moving in with her older sister Sam, a fashion photographer living in San Francisco, played by Pam Dawber. Is Patti funny? A little. Does she get on your nerves? A lot.

Not to worry, though, because CBS now says it’s throwing out the pilot, substituting another premiere and toning down Patti so that she and Sam can have a sisterly relationship that is, you know, more meaningful.

--”Designing Women,” comedy, CBS, 9:30 p.m. Four women work out their mid-life crises while running an Atlanta decorating business. Nice quasi-”Golden Girls” premise. Good ensemble cast (Delta Burke, Annie Potts, Dixie Carter, Jean Smart). Smart wardrobes. Appealing set. Snappy pacing. Everything is present--everything but a funny script. The good news is that the characters live apart and have no plans to move in with each other.

TUESDAY

--”Matlock,” drama, NBC, 8 p.m. This stiff marks Andy Griffith’s return to series TV as your basic, you’ve-seen-it all-before, dumb-sounding, shrewd-thinking country lawyer who has city slickers for breakfast. Was there ever a dumb-sounding country lawyer who was really dumb?

The mood is lighthearted, including having a tough mobster hem pants for relaxation in one episode. But a needle and thread won’t fix this series. “What we need,” twangs hayseed Matlock before making hay in the courtroom, “is a bright idea--and soon.” He said it.

--”The Wizard,” drama, CBS, 8 p.m. “I’m comfortable in my skin,” says Simon, a dwarf toy maker with special powers. It’s lines like that--and the presence of David Rappaport as Simon--which may elevate this adventure series above the routine. While the forces of evil covet our fun-loving hero, he seeks only to make children happy. He succeeds on the pilot, finding a tender kinship with a boy who has leukemia. Simon sez: Watch this series.

--”Crime Story,” drama, NBC, 9 p.m. With “Miami Vice” and such bloody theatrical features as “Thief” and “Manhunter” under his ammo belt, it figured that producer Michael Mann would go on to even trigger-happier projects. You might get the impression that this series is one of them, a serial initially set in the 1960s, about a Chicago police unit’s war against major crimes, with former cop Dennis Farina doing a nice job as Lt. Mike Forello.

However, NBC vows that the violent two-hour pilot is not entirely representative of the series and that ensuing episodes feature “much greater emphasis on character development.”

That’s encouraging, for the opener features more crime than story while setting a record for gratuitous shotgunnings to 1960s rock music. It’s a blast--literally!

--”Jack & Mike,” drama, ABC, 10 p.m. This doggie may survive only because it follows “Moonlighting” at the tail of an expected hot ABC night. Tom Mason and Shelley Hack play a Chicago couple juggling marriage and careers.

Mike’s a restaurateur and Jackie a tough and dedicated newspaper columnist. How tough? In one revolting scene at a ball game, Mike throws a squealing Jackie over his shoulder, caveman-style, and carries her off as the crowd hoots and cheers. How dedicated? “I’m in this business ‘cause I need to know why,” Jackie declares. “I gotta find out the truth.” Now, if she could only type.

WEDNESDAY

--”Together We Stand,” comedy, CBS, 8 p.m. Elliott Gould and Dee Wallace Stone are a yuppie white couple with two white kids, one adopted. Almost on a whim, though, they adopt a Vietnamese teen-ager. And then, as routinely as buying a suit with two pairs of pants, they add a black toddler to their family. Won’t this melting-pot household be fun? Next question.

--”Better Days,” comedy, CBS, 8:30 p.m. So much for the Bill Cosby influence. Here is a relentlessly stupid series following a white Beverly Hills High School basketball star (Raphael Sbarge) as he moves in with his Brooklyn grandfather (Dick O’Neill) but is rejected by the black “brothers” on his new team until they discover that he’s really just a regular guy.

This seems to be Hollywood’s attempt to make an inner-city comedy acceptable to white America, with whites speaking wisdom, blacks (“I’m gonna dance on yo face!”) speaking like Mr. T.

--”Head of the Class,” comedy, ABC, 8:30 p.m. Howard Hesseman (“WKRP in Cincinnati”) as Charlie Moore, teacher of a gifted high school class? It’s a promising premise and Hesseman has a nice comedic touch, but he’s betrayed on the premiere by ungifted writers.

Student: “I like squash.” Charlie: “You play squash?” Student: “No, I eat it.” Get it? The student meant the vegetable, Charlie meant the sport. Oh, well. . . .

THURSDAY --”Our World,” ABC News, 8 p.m. Facing “The Cosby Show” and “Family Ties” on NBC, the unpreviewed “Our World” is expected to begin slowly before making its move--a mad dash toward oblivion.

Madison Avenue is kissing off a news-produced series that each week focuses on an epic time--perhaps just a day--in American history. Yet co-hosts/writers Linda Ellerbee and Ray Gandolf are such intriguing, off-type personalities that the hour could at least be interesting. And if ratings disappoint, Ellerbee and Gandolf can always always move in with their grandfathers and become a sitcom.

--”Kay O’Brien,” drama, CBS, 10 p.m. New York filming gives the pilot some ambiance, and Patricia Kalember is fairly credible as an idealistic young surgical resident fighting hospital bureaucracy a la “Ben Casey” and “Dr. Kildare.”

After a promising start, though, the writers turn Kayo, as she’s called by friends, into Super-Surgeon and everything deteriorates. Confronted by male chauvinism, she naturally defeats her adversary in the end, having the advantage of being perfect.

FRIDAY

--”Sledge Hammer,” comedy, ABC, 9 p.m. While NBC’s “Miami Vice” and CBS’ “Dallas” fight the duel of the titans in this time period, ABC will try to slip under the door this sputtering spoof of Dirty Harry and Rambo starring David Rasche as a macho , fast-drawing, overkilling cop who talks to his gun.

Gimmicks are hard to sustain. “Sledge Hammer” begins hilariously--Sledge blows up a building to get a sniper--but shoots its wad in 10 minutes. Unfortunately, this is a 30-minute show. Well, maybe if the gun talked back. . . .

--”Sidekicks,” adventure, ABC, 9:30 p.m., completes the hour. Last season’s pilot (“The Last Electric Knight”) set the stage for the series: Gil Gerard is an unfatherly cop who reluctantly becomes the guardian of a 10-year-old boy, played by Ernie Reyes Jr., who--luck of luck--just happens to be a karate whiz. That means they can fight crime together while, if the pilot is an indication, viewers fight boredom.

--”Starman,” drama, ABC, 10 p.m. This is ABC’s unpreviewed sequel to the wise, romantic and entertaining theatrical movie starring Jeff Bridges as a guileless alien who assumes human form and impregnates his girlfriend before heading home.

Robert Hays (“Airplane!”) is TV’s Starman, living the life of “The Fugitive” after returning to Earth 14 years later to raise his orphaned teen-age son. If only, each week, the genial alien can elude those nasty scientists who want to (gulp) study him.

--”L.A. Law,” drama, NBC, 10 p.m. Here is proof that execution is at least as critical as originality. Executive producers Steven Bochco and Terry Louise Fischer have successfully applied the “Hill Street Blues” and “St. Elsewhere” formula to the legal profession, creating the kind of series you can build an evening around.

The setting is an upscale law firm where glamour often exceeds integrity, ethics and personalities clash and the most interesting battles are fought in ego-infested hallways, offices and conference rooms. Good writing, rich textures and rhythms and a strong ensemble cast led by Harry Hamlin, Jill Eikenberry and Richard Dysart make “L.A. Law” the best pilot of its kind since Bochco’s “Hill Street Blues” and a good reason to stay home Friday nights.

SATURDAY --”Downtown,” drama, CBS, 8 p.m. Tough, arrogant cop John Forney (Michael Nouri) offends his superiors and is assigned to supervise four parolees. Will the reluctant ex-cons become Forney’s reluctant partners a la “48 HRS” and “The Dirty Dozen?” Will they become TV’s latest specialized crimebusting unit? Bank on it.

Forney tells his new team of misfits: “You are pathetic, you are all losers. . . . “ To say nothing of the people who rolled out this derivative series.

--”Life With Lucy,” comedy, ABC, 8 p.m. Some people are wondering if Lucille Ball will return to series TV with a deafening thud. Some people may be right to wonder. You can get winded just writing about her new comedy. “The incomparable first lady of comedy,” as ABC calls her, plays Lucy Barker, who moves in with her daughter, whose husband is the son of the business partner of Lucy’s dead husband, who moves into the same house because his grandchildren live there, too. Naturally, he and Lucy share a bathroom.

There’s more. Lucy decides to help run the hardware business owned by her dead husband and his partner (played by Ball’s old co-star Gale Gordon, 80). Grind out those high jinks. How does Ball, now 75, handle all this? “In typical Lucy fashion,” promises ABC. Well, maybe. Don’t touch that dial.

--”The Ellen Burstyn Show,” comedy, ABC, 8:30 p.m. ABC must have a thing about eclectic comedies, for Burstyn plays a college professor who shares a Baltimore brownstone with her brash mother, divorced daughter and grandson, 5.

The premiere is an unfunny drag, with Burstyn nice but dull and Elaine Stritch perfectly cast as a wisecracking mother, but having no good cracks to make. Can this be the Oscar-winning Burstyn of “Alice” fame and other meritorious roles? Maybe she doesn’t live here anymore.

--”Heart of the City,” drama, ABC, 9 p.m. Robert Desiderio plays a cop who polices by night and parents like crazy by day. He’s a man with so much goodness you can hardly stand it, a prince of sensitivity and a regular yutz , a single parent who reacts by overreacting.

One of his two kids twitches, he rushes over like a yenta. On the pilot, his 15-year-old daughter can hardly find the words:. “You are so . . . I can’t breathe.” Join the crowd.

--”Amen,” comedy, NBC, 9:30 p.m. A probable hit because it follows the popular “Golden Girls,” “Amen” oozes energy, rousing gospel music and a bit too much Sherman Hemsley. In “The Jeffersons,” he was a fast-talking, fast-dealing businessman. In “Amen,” he is a fast-talking, fast-dealing deacon of a black church. Different setting, same character.

The premiere sets the stage for clashes between the deacon and an idealistic pastor played by Clifton Davis, with most of the humor coming from the ladies of the church board, most of the pleasure from the music.