WEEKEND TV : ‘OUTLAWS’ TURN OUT TO BE DETECTIVES

Just about everybody on TV ends up being a private eye.

Hence, “Outlaws,” a CBS action-adventure series gets a special two-hour premiere at 9 p.m. Sunday (on Channels 2 and 8), thereafter to air at 8 p.m. Saturdays.

The premise: Tough, ornery turn-of-the-century hombres are magically transported to the present, where they open a private detective agency.

No, I’m not making this up. It could be worse. They could have become a heavy-metal rock band.

It’s bad enough as is. Flat production. Flat cast. Flat two hours.

The setting is Houston in 1899. Four bank robbers are about to shoot it out with their former partner, an outlaw-turned-sheriff. It’s Harlan (William Lucking), Wolf (Charles Napier), Ice (Richard Roundtree) and Billy (Patrick Houser) facing Sheriff John Grail (Rod Taylor).

Suddenly an electrical storm hits, inexplicably sending all five of them 87 years into the future.

The four badmen plus good man can hardly believe their ears or eyes--a soaring, whooshing jet throws them into a panic. It’s now 1986 and standing before them like a mirage is a Houston they’ve never seen, vast, skyscrapered and awesome.

What do they do? Take in the Astros? Well, they’re not outlaws for nothing. They head for the nearest cheap bar and get into one of those corny Western brawls. Having arrived from 1899 with all their cliches in tact, they’re able to engage in all this head bashing without losing their hats.

Why series creator/executive producer Nicholas Corea didn’t draw his five heroes from the Old West instead of the Not So Old West is a mystery. Even so, they have a lot of catching up to do--and they do it faster than you can say yup .

When they watch TV and actually like it, it’s your first clue that something’s not right.

The script has holes big enough to drive a buffalo through. Grail and Harlan find out that historians have mistakenly recorded the five as dying in their aborted gunfight. How do they find that out? From history books. Where do they find history books? In a library? How do 1899 relics know about 1986 libraries? They’re fast learners. How do they get the books? They check them out. Where do they get a library card? You’re on your own.

The premiere is gratuitously violent, slow, plodding and, worst of all, lacking style and a sense of fun. If you can’t do this for laughs, then what’s the purpose?

What’s amazing is how swiftly the 1899ers adapt and shed their musty former consciousness. Ice, the only black outlaw, almost weeps when he reads about blacks struggling for civil rights in the 20th Century. The outlaws also get drivers licenses and Billy becomes an expert motorcyclist in a matter of weeks.

It’s inevitable that the outlaws have a shootout with some modern crooks. Luckily, the moderns can’t hit anything, even with their machine pistols, and the outlaws can with their ancient weapons.

With this kind of success under their gun belts, its only a matter of time before the now-reconciled five establish the Double-Eagle Detective Agency on their very own Double Eagle Ranch. But that’s the stuff of future episodes.

Despite the dusty Western look, it’s all very routine. Give them another season (heaven forbid) and they’ll move to Beverly Hills and begin doing lunch with their agents.