TV REVIEWS : A Mixed Bag of Premieres Courtesy of Fox and Lifetime

Now that the Persian Gulf crisis seems to have been downgraded to a steady ominous hum, it’s time to move on to an even bigger crisis.

TV viewers held hostage.

That’s the theme for the new television season, which proceeds this weekend with three series: one interesting, one funny, one awful. Yes, you’re right, we could be describing news anchors here.

As it turns out, the interesting series--Lifetime’s “E.N.G.”-- is about TV news. The funny series is Fox’s “Parker Lewis Can’t Lose.” The awful series, also from Fox, is “True Colors.”

“E.N.G.”--E.N.G. stands for electronic news gathering--is interesting because television news and its continual clash of human and technological components is interesting. Premiering with a two-hour episode at 5 p.m. today on Lifetime cable, however, this Canadian-produced series is ultimately as shallow and senselessly action-driven as much of the business it portrays.

The news director is tough, but fair and principled, resisting a general manager who lives for the bottom line. The hard-nosed female executive producer is sleeping with the daredevil cameraman. The chain-smoking assignment editor is a grating cynic. And star reporters appear ready to bend rules of ethics to get the “lead” story and advance their careers.

The regular serialized hour episodes will air 7 p.m. weekdays starting Monday, introducing a big-city local news operation (Channel 10), where getting pictures of the latest fire or bank robbery takes precedence over everything.

Right off the bat, therefore, we find Channel 10 executives waxing euphoric over dramatic fire-rescue footage obtained by cameraman Jake Antonelli (Mark Humphrey), ignoring the fact that he got it by barging into a burning building behind firemen. Later, commando Jake gets himself taken hostage by thugs after they notice his camera pressed up against the window of the food store they’re robbing.

“E.N.G.” attempts to balance the whiz-bang stuff with the human side of Channel 10, with executive producer Ann Hindebrandt (Sara Botsford) lovingly caring for the married Jake and awkwardly adjusting to just-arrived news director Mike Fennell (Art Hindle) and Fennell having problems (in Monday’s episode) with his 15-year-old daughter.

Despite some hokeyness, “E.N.G.” does give a sense of strengths and flaws of “live” technology and also of the internal debates and daily pressures faced by a news department racing competition and the clock. What it initially fails to do, however, is use its characters to step back and examine the ethical issues it raises in an offhanded manner. As with real TV news, whiz-bang wins.

Rarely have two new series been as similar as “Parker Lewis Can’t Lose” and NBC’s recently premiered “Ferris Bueller.” Both are about rule-breaking, deal-making, hooky-playing, fast-talking teen-agers who manipulate, outwit and make fools of their sisters and high school principals.

Both are inspired by the Matthew Broderick character in the movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” Both series are likable and great fun. However, Fox’s Parker is NBC’s Ferris raised a notch.

“Parker Lewis Can’t Lose” debuts at 9:30 p.m. Sunday on KTTV Channel 11 with wit, verve, style and Corin Nemec as the undefeated Parker, whose allies are his deviously scheming mind, his “best bud” Mikey (Billy Jayne) and the idolizing and twerpy Jerry (Troy Slaten).

Creatively shot from wacky angles and accented by bizarre sound effects, the opening story finds Parker and Mikey in conflict over a girl and both boys in conflict with a gigantic bully and their gigantically mean principal Ms. Musso. With Melanie Chartoff almost stealing the show as Ms. Musso, “Parker Lewis Can’t Lose” is a gleamingly slick, high-tech delight.

The new Fox comedy series “True Colors” is about as pale as television gets.

Sunday’s 8:30 p.m. premiere (the regular time is 7 p.m.) is a cloddish and humorless introduction to an interracial marriage that initially, at least, is little more than a device to dredge up one of TV’s weariest sitcom formulas: merging families.

Newlyweds are Ron (Frankie Faison), a black dentist, and Ellen (Stephanie Faracy), a white elementary school teacher, who seem to have but one problem. Living with them are his sons Terry and Lester (Claude Brooks and Adam Jeffries) and her daughter Katie (Brigid Conley) and mother Sara (Nancy Walker).

The kids bicker. Grandma grumbles.

The best thing you can say about “True Colors” is that it goes light on the cheap racial jokes, focusing instead on the predictable racial and generational relationships, the main antagonists being kvetching Sara and rap-talking Lester: “Yo, grandma!”

“True Colors” has an able cast, but it’s squandered in an episode that centers on the potential fate of a pet turkey. Yo! This show is a turkey.