TV REVIEW : Magical Medical Tour

Yet another new young-something series? Yes, mon.

Only this time the setting is a Caribbean island and the characters of ABC’s likable “Going to Extremes”--contrasting with Fox’s “Melrose Place” and “The Heights” and CBS’ “Freshman Dorm” and NBC’s upcoming “The Round Table”--have scope, wit and just a little touch of magic.

The latest from “Northern Exposure” and “I’ll Fly Away” executive producers Joshua Brand and John Falsey, “Going to Extremes” is a taste of something tropically terrific. Its premiere--at 10 tonight on Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42--goes down like a tall, cool Jamaican drink.

Before getting carried away, let’s note that “Going to Extremes” is no “Northern Exposure.” Not yet. Just like that series, however, “Going to Extremes” creates an olio of whimsy and tenderness with urban characters relocated to a seemingly simpler setting where coping is often an adventure.

The fictional island is Jantique, home of an unaccredited medical school that accepts--and puts to work in the local clinic--students rejected by other schools, its founder being obsessed with showing up the “pansy-ass elitists in the medical Establishment.”

The characters are an entertaining mix. Deplaning in Jantique tonight are Alex Lauren (Daniel Jenkins)--who immediately has his pocket picked--and Kathleen McDermott (Joanna Going). They take up residence in a villa overlooking the sea with three other first-year Croft University med students who keep running afoul of local customs: Cheryl Carter (Erika Alexander), Kim Selby (Camilo Gallardo) and Charlie Moran (Andrew Lauer).

The ensemble’s angry young man is stormy second-year student Colin Mitford (Duncan McNeill), frustrated tonight when an islander ignores his advice to be tested for diabetes. And we also meet eccentric university founder Dr. Henry Croft (Roy Dotrice), serious-minded administrator Dr. Michael Norris (Carl Lumbly) and such faculty members as partying Dr. Jack Van DeWeghe (Charles Keating) and seductive Dr. Alice Davis (June Chadwick), who swims nude and keeps photos of her male students mounted on her wall “like butterflies.”

Much like “Northern Exposure,” this new series just feels right, its skillful intermingling of the serious, the humorous and the bizarre distinguishing it from prime time’s crush of sameness. In a future episode, the neurotic Charlie is shadowed by a mysterious islander and Kathleen befriends a young boy who keeps jumping off structures to impress a girl who impresses him: “She fills my eyes.”

As much as anything, it’s an ever-present music score and the local charm--from the filming in Jamaica to the distinctive dialects (“Inside wit you!”)--that give the series its uniquely pleasing rhythms. Sexy, ironic, funny and lush, it fills your eyes.