TELEVISION REVIEWS : <i> ‘PRIVATE EYE’ </i>

How ironic that TV’s newest season should begin with TV’s oldest dinosaur--the private detective.

NBC strikes first with a special two-hour premiere of “Private Eye” at 9 p.m. Sunday, a series that will regularly air at 10 p.m. Fridays following “Miami Vice.” Both created by Anthony Yerkovich, the series are similar in tone and style.

What TV doesn’t need is another private eye. Better this one than most, though.

Subsequent episodes may differ, but the “Private Eye” premiere is intriguingly bluesy, shadowy and cinematic while introducing Jack Cleary (Michael Woods) as a seedy former Los Angeles cop in 1956 who takes over his murdered brother’s private eye agency and pursues the killer. Johnny Betts (Josh Brolin), a pompadoured rock ‘n’ roller who drives a 1949 Mercury, becomes his sidekick.

Although the plot is a bit thin, Woods makes an appealingly unglamorous hero, and he and Brolin an attractively offbeat pair.

All in all, “Private Eye” gets off to a highly interesting start, with Mark Tinker directing its old-fashioned story of cop corruption with style and wit, helped by heavy doses of period atmosphere and music. And keep an eye on Lisa Jane Persky as Cleary’s gum-popping secretary, Dotti Dworski, who steals every scene she’s in.