Fish, Foul Play and a Not-So-Savory Cafe

They’re the Not Quite Over the Hill Gang, a pair of shrewd bumpkins who wear their potbellies like badges of honor while enforcing the law in a picturesque mountain resort town where nothing much happens but real estate construction and, well, murder.

It’s these immensely likable gray foxes--played by crafty actors Wilford Brimley and Richard Farnsworth--who make “The Boys of Twilight” the most promising series in prime time’s micro-mini new season that arrives tonight and Saturday.

Preceding the 10 p.m. Saturday arrival of “The Boys of Twilight” on CBS (Channels 2 and 8) are tonight’s premieres of three additional series. The unpreviewed “Scorch” (at 8 p.m.) is a CBS comedy about a fire-breathing teen-age dragon. It’s followed on CBS at 8:30 by Hanna-Barbera’s “Fish Police,” which joins “The Simpsons” and “Capitol Critters” as part of prime-time’s swelling parade of animated comedies. Says Inspector Gil (the voice of John Ritter): “I’m a cop who’s a carp.”

At 10 p.m. on Channels 4, 36 and 39, finally, NBC officially introduces “Nightmare Cafe,” a quasi-science fiction hour about an all-night hash house with a heart.

A dragon, a carp and cafe that takes on a life of its own? It’s that kind of year.

To buy into “The Boys of Twilight,” you have to forget about the plot. There isn’t one. Well, Sheriff Cody McPherson (Farnsworth) and Deputy Bill Huntoon (Brimley) do go after the arsenic slayer of a beautiful ski instructor. And they solve the murder, with the assistance of Cody’s deceptively canny wife, Genelva (Louise Fletcher), and bumbling young Ben Browder (Tyler Clare), the mayor’s nephew, who has been foisted on them as a deputy.

However, the mystery is wispy thin and predictable, and not even very central to the hour. Along with the rugged Utah backdrop, it’s the minimalist Brimley and Farnsworth and their mustachioed characters--the grouchy, sardonic Huntoon and the stoic, gentlemanly McPherson--who keep you watching. They never overreach, subtly conveying their uneasy tolerance of each other through voice inflections, steely glares and raised eyebrows. Farnsworth and Brimley are inspired pairing.

Even though the ridiculous action ending soars over the top, executive producer William Blinn creates a charming, lighthearted environment while infusing “The Boys of Twilight” with one humorous touch after another. For example, the slaying is such big news in town that the local radio station sets a precedent by breaking into Paul Harvey. And at one point, Huntoon, his bladder full while out in the country, rushes behind a fence to “water the horses.” Moreover, Joel McNeely’s “Northern Exposure”-like theme sets the perfect tone for getting to the bottom of an imperfect crime.

“A country person don’t do things like a city person does,” Sheriff McPherson wryly observes. “Arsenic--that’s a city person.” He and his deputy are on the right track, and you have the impression that the only puzzle that may stump these two is how to survive at the tail end of a traditionally undernourished CBS Saturday night.

Meanwhile, the “boys” mosey on down the road, taking you with them.

How would Raymond Chandler sound underwater? Inspector Gil on the hazards of Fish City: “Being a good cop in a bad town can be murder.”

Now you know.

Calling “Fish Police” an animated comedy/mystery, as CBS does, gives mystery a bad name. The premiere is intermittently amusing, though, with a cast of marine life voices including Ritter, Edward Asner, Georgia Brown, Tim Curry, Hector Elizondo, Robert Guillaume, Buddy Hackett, JoBeth Williams and Jonathan Winters.

Inspector Gil is the half-hour’s Chandleresque narrator and central fish, attempting tonight to prove that the dishy Angel (Williams) was not the murderer of the unsavory Clams Casino. A likelier possibility is the victim’s former partner, that slithery crime boss Calamari (Elizondo sounding like Brando’s Godfather).

Based on a comic book series by Steve Moncuse, “Fish Police” gushes fish gags galore. For example, Gil’s growly boss, the cigar-chomping Chief Abalone, complains that the city is full of maniacs “murdering innocent fish.” Getting a whiff of one of the dead fish, a cop observes, “Murder stinks!” And of course, suspects leave “finprints” instead of fingerprints.

Although clever, the fish jokes get old after awhile, and you find yourself wanting to surface for air long before “Fish Police” does.

Nothing gets on your nerves more than a holier-than-thou, do-gooder cafe.

That’s what NBC delivers with its new drama, “Nightmare Cafe,” in which a creepy all-night restaurant changes the lives of its patrons, who arrive there in trouble.

Previously aired by NBC as an unannounced sneak preview, tonight’s premiere finds Frank (Jack Coleman) and Fay (Lindsay Frost) dying on the same evening, only to have the cafe give them another chance at life. They take it and, after a brush with murderous thugs, stay on as employees of the cafe, him as a cook, her as a waitress.

As it turns out, the Maytag repairman gets more action, for there’s no need to cook food because there are no customers to eat it. That means there’s no one to wait on, either.

So listen . . . no job is perfect.

Frank, Fay and this supernatural guy named Blackie just hang around. It’s all a device so that they can get involved in the lives of the people (usually one or two per episode) who pop in.

The cafe’s prize feature is a big-screen TV on which characters can see the overlapping realities, past and present, of their own lives and the lives of others. Tonight, Frank watches Fay surprise her philandering boyfriend in the act, and next week Fay watches Frank engage in steamy foreplay with a woman who convinces him she’s being abused by her husband.

Obviously, the cafe’s set is switched to a cable channel.

Although the “Nightmare Cafe” premise has potential, it’s first two episodes are undermined by scripts that are too ordinary and full of holes and contrivances to be interesting. Tonight, for example, Fay just happens to be the jilted girlfriend of the toxic dumper who employs Frank. At several points tonight and next week, moreover, people place themselves in jeopardy by doing things that no sensible person would do. And finally, since both Frank and Fay seem able to leave the cafe any time they wish, why do they ever return? It can’t be for the food.

“Nightmare Cafe” is produced by Wes Craven (“Nightmare on Elm Street”), and Blackie is played by Robert Englund of Freddy Krueger fame. But there are no scares here, and Fred Flintstone is more suspenseful.