The Fall Season: Judgment Day : Television: Taking the measure of the 35 new series on ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox.

They’re television’s 100th or 200th--pick your number--elite group of undercover cops renowned for terrorizing and foiling the vilest of criminals. They wear fedoras and dusters. They’re young, they’re tough, they’re indestructible and, above all, they’re absurd.

Coming to you Wednesday on CBS, they’re “The Hat Squad.”

And yet, though frightening to contemplate, it’s probably true that television--the brain-numbing doomsday device that the majority of Americans watch or fall asleep in front of night after night--is as good today as it’s ever been.

With selective memories we replay past seasons and recall the heroic shows of yesteryear--mentally pulling them toward us and holding them tight as if trying to bring back the dead--conveniently ignoring the slew of clunkers that surrounded them when they were alive.

Thus, as we take this preliminary measurement of the lackluster 1992-93 prime-time season that began trickling down a few weeks ago during the summer, context is advised. Is this the worst season ever? Surely not. In fact, it includes a good number of series that a charitable observer might characterize as highly promising.

Yet 44 years after the debut of a comedy named “Buzzy Wuzzy” as part of prime-time’s first full season, shouldn’t television by this time be just a little bit higher on the food chain?

If you’re seeking a metaphor for prime-time homogeneity on the major entertainment networks, try ABC, where “American’s Funniest People” again follows “America’s Funniest Home Videos” on Sunday nights, or Fox, where “Cops” is followed by “Cops” on Saturday nights. These are double features showing the same feature.

Thank goodness that 61% of the nation is wired for cable, for when it comes to variety, over-the-air mainstream television has narrowed to a rivulet. Mull that while reading about the 35 new series on ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox (new PBS, syndicated and cable shows will be examined later) aimed collectively at an audience that for the most part is somewhat younger than modern television itself and knows the Vietnam War mainly through “China Beach.”

The 18-to-49 age group--with heaviest emphasis on the 18--has never been more coveted by advertisers. The Fox network’s steady climb on the coattails of a schedule aimed at MTV minds and pubescent viewers with pimples--a la the cult high school hit “Beverly Hills, 90210”--has not gone unnoticed by Madison Avenue and the older networks, which have started drafting parts of their own schedules in zit cream.

It’s not that emphasizing youth is necessarily a negative, only that in this particular fall season, one notably lacking in verve and diversity, young just happens to mostly equal yucky.

In a season that makes 40 seem musty, 50 positively geriatric and 60--well, does anyone even live to be 60?--the new lineup is interwoven with ensemble dramas following youngish types as they navigate their way through their treacherous 20s. Of these series, only ABC’s “Going to Extremes” crafts characters who display some depth and complexity, in contrast to the mostly superficial hunks, hardbodies and harems populating “The Round Table” on NBC and “Melrose Place” and “The Heights” on Fox, whose reverse gerontologists also are giving you a new college drama, the unpreviewed “Class of ’96.” It will have to go some to match the zero viscosity of the feckless CBS summer series, “Freshman Dorm.”

And now some ‘92-93 minitrends:

* Comedies with primarily African-America casts. Such series are hardly revolutionary, but there are five additional ones this season: Fox’s “Martin,” ABC’s “Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper” and NBC’s “Here and Now,” “Out All Night” and “Rhythm and Blues” (which also includes a pivotal white character). This crush of African-American comedies is notable if only because convincing network executives to program a drama series reflecting the contemporary African-American experience remains one of TV’s toughest sales.

* Series with strong feminist themes. Intially, at least, the female cops in the CBS drama series “Angel Street” are sexually harassed. The 50ish protagonist of the CBS comedy “Frannie’s Turn” can no longer suppress her anger over being subservient to her husband and other men. The budding country singer in the ABC comedy “Delta” leaves a clod of a husband who had expected her to stifle her own dreams while serving him meals and keeping his house and clothes clean. And the central character in another ABC comedy, “Laurie Hill,” is trying to balance marriage and motherhood with her career as a physician.

* Series with Latino characters. There haven’t been many in prime time, but four new Latino characters, including Frannie’s macho husband, Joseph, open the season. Latino characters are also showcased in “The Round Table” and “The Hat Squad,” and another has a secondary role in the Fox comedy, “Likely Suspects.”

Enough of the preliminaries. It’s time now to anoint the “Fabulous 35” with judgments from high. It’s taken weeks to carve these into stone:

The Cream

There’s not one network newcomer that matches the boldness and ingenuity of “The Larry Sanders Show,” Garry Shandling’s laugh-spewing new weekly talk-show satire on HBO. Heading the next level on the networks:

* “The Ben Stiller Show,” a Fox comedy premiering Sept. 27. At least a 14-minute tape--all that was available to preview--was hilarious, with Stiller starring in some creative parodies (“Cops” staking out and arresting the witches of Salem, for example). The format has Stiller broadcasting a weekly TV variety program from his Hollywood apartment, a possible forerunner of things to come in television if the economy doesn’t improve.

* “Bob,” a CBS comedy premiering Friday. Bob Newhart is sitcomdom’s perennial Fountain of Youth, his wrinkle-free humor never changing or aging. This time out he’s Bob McKay, the cartoonist/author of “Mad Dog,” a superhero making a comic book comeback. Will easygoing Bob ever get any peace from his twisted partner, who wants to turn the heroic “Mad Dog” into a demonic vigilante? You certainly hope not.

* “Love and War,” a CBS comedy from Diane English (“Murphy Brown”), premiering next Monday. Jack Stein (Jay Thomas) regularly gets assaulted on the street and pelted with garbage. Maybe it’s the newspaper columns he writes (“Feminism is dead”). Wallis Porter (Susan Day) is getting pelted by life, boozing up in a bar that Stein frequents and buying the place on the spot. Their distasteful first meeting naturally leads to dinner at his apartment, where they confide their true feelings to the camera. Will these opposites attract? Maybe, maybe not. But the “Love and War” cast and English’s smart writing initially do.

* “Going to Extremes,” an ABC drama that already premiered. American medical students attend an unaccredited school in a Jamaican-style island where they find that learning local customs is as challenging as learning anatomy. Driven by a quirky wit and interesting characters, “Going to Extremes” is from the creators of “Northern Exposure,” ensuring its comparison with that incomparable CBS series. That may be its biggest obstacle.

The Creamettes

* “Picket Fences,” a CBS drama premiering Friday. Rome, Wis., is the setting for a series about a couple--he (Tom Skerrit) the local sheriff, she (Kathy Baker) the local doctor--whose family and professional lives are touched by droll, sometimes bizarre humor. The likable and often amusing premiere is uneven but keeps your interest with a twisty little whodunit that starts with the death of the Tin Man in a local production of “The Wizard of Oz.” Keep your eye on the Scarecrow.

* “Crossroads,” an ABC drama premiering tonight. Robert Urich plays a big-time prosecutor who decides that the best way to get to know his estranged 16-year-old son is to take him through the Midwest--on a motorcycle. (See separate review, F10.)

* “Covington Cross,” an ABC drama that already premiered. Anything with medieval warriors shooting crossbows and swinging broadswords in not-so-merry old England is something worth noting. Especially when--as in this not-to-be-taken-seriously saga about a kindly noble whose rambunctious family drives him up the castle walls--the action is accompanied by a sense of humor.

* “Flying Blind,” a Fox comedy that premiered Sunday night. Bored with his new job at a food company, Neil Barash (Corey Parker) has his tedium shattered when he’s approached in a restaurant by an unstable, sexy woman named Alicia (Tea Leoni) who demands to sleep with him right away. The ensuing fun-for-all is nourished by bright, crisp writing.

* “Likely Suspects,” a Fox comedy (mislabeled a drama) that already premiered. A police detective whose rookie partner is the camera? It somehow works in this breezy little tongue-in-cheek series starring Sam McMurray.

The Crowd

* “Laurie Hill,” an ABC comedy premiering Sept. 30. Despite credible characters and some occasionally amusing dialogue, there’s not much zest to this wistful half hour about a compassionate doctor (DeLane Matthews) who becomes a slave to her beeper, leaving her husband to spend quality time with their small son. As they did on ABC’s “Wonder Years,” creators Carol Black and Neal Marlens attempt to give “Laurie Hill” both wit and poignancy, but deliver only a smattering of each.

* “Delta,” an ABC comedy premiering Tuesday. Former Designing Woman Delta Burke this time has designs on a career as a country music singer, which she pursues by dumping her husband and heading for Nashville. Seemingly comfortable with farce, Burke has her moments, but few big enough to overcome the show’s comedic deficiencies. Like Delta the singer, “Delta” the series is notable mostly for its noise.

* “Hearts Afire,” CBS comedy premiering tonight. John Ritter plays an aide to a conservative Southern senator and Markie Post is the brain-atrophied lawmaker’s press secretary. (See separate review, F10.)

* “Woops!,” a Fox comedy premiering Sept. 27. This is one of those series that reads like its inventive and inviting on the printed page. But what does happen when four men and two women somehow survive a nuclear holocaust and wind up living together in an isolated farmhouse? Worst case scenario: “Gilligan’s Island” on land. Best case scenario: None yet.

* “The Round Table,” an NBC drama premiering Friday. An FBI agent. A federal prosecutor. A Justice Department attorney. A Secret Service agent. A cop. They’re young. They’re ambitious. They’re good looking. They’re here. They’re there. They hang out in a Georgetown bar called The Round Table. They’re a round table. They’re a banquet table. They’re a coffee table. They’re a table saw. They’re a tablespoon. They’re. . . .

* “Angel Street,” a CBS drama series premiering Tuesday. Robin Givens and Pamela Gidley play two homicide detectives--one African-American and the other Polish-American--battling crime, sexism and each other in an atmosphere of tawdriness that includes many of their male colleagues. Although interesting, the swollen two-hour premiere is long on gore and dialogue, short on clarity.

* “Frannie’s Turn,” a CBS comedy that premiered Sunday night. British actress Miriam Margoyles is convincing as a matronly New Yorker fed up with doing the bidding of her Cuban-American husband and other men. Nearly devoid of laughs, however, “Frannie’s Turn” is unconvincing as a comedy.

* “Mad About You,” an NBC comedy premiering Sept. 23. Helen Hunt and Paul Reiser are a likable pair as New York newlyweds Jamie and Paul Cooper. Yet you find yourself asking the same question the Coopers ask about their brief marriage: Is this all there is? Jamie and Paul fight a lot . . . about nothing. “Mad About You” seems to be . . . about nothing.

* “The Edge,” a Fox half-hour of sketch comedy premiering Saturday. With humor ranging from fairly funny to supremely sophomoric and crude, “The Edge” affirms that even the best satirist performers--and the series has some skilled ones--are only as good as their writers.

* “I Witness Video,” NBC reality series, already premiered. Virtually nothing is beyond the videocam lens these days, witness these amateur camcorder operators getting to show their footage of crimes and national disasters on national TV. Some of it is interesting, much of it repetitive. If one of these junior filmmakers happens to tape a hurricane knocking over his mother-in-law, he can double up and also submit it to “America’s Funniest Home Videos.”

The Creeps

* “Camp Wilder,” an ABC comedy premiering Friday. Actually, it’s not a camp but a chaotic household where teen-agers hang out and the adult in charge, played by Mary Page Keller, is not very much in charge. In the premiere, her 16-year-old brother, played by Jerry O’Connell, defies her by going to a party where beer is served. One problem is that the strapping O’Connell looks old enough to be brewing beer, to say nothing of drinking it. Another is that none of this is remotely funny.

* “Here and Now,” an NBC comedy premiering Saturday. Once flying high as Bill Cosby’s son, Malcolm-Jamal Warner crashes hard in his own Cosby-produced series as a graduate student volunteering in an inner-city youth center and sharing the apartment of an old family friend whose daughter turns him on. It may reflect TV’s new reality, but Warner’s opening clashes with a tough-talking street kid and his drug-dealing older brother are something less than comedic.

* “Out All Night,” an NBC comedy premiering Saturday. Recent college grad Jeff Carswell (Morris Chestnut) is elated when hired by former singing star Chelsea Paige (Patti LaBelle) to be a manager-trainee at her trendy nightclub. He’s even happier when he meets her attractive daughter. But then the other shoe falls, and Jeff learns that Chelsea is a smothering-mother type who sees him as her surrogate son: “Sit up, baby. You’ll get a hunchback.” And you may get a headache watching it.

* “Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper,” an ABC comedy premiering Sept. 22. Lanky Mark Curry plays a genial substitute teacher who shares an Oakland house with two young women while facing an unruly class and a persnickety idiot of a principal at school. “Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper” has already been labeled a black “Three’s Company.” An even worse indictment? It’s not as funny.

* “Rhythm and Blues,” an NBC comedy premiering Sept. 24. WBLZ in Detroit is a black-run soul radio station that tries to regain its past glory by importing a high-powered deejay sight unseen. “I can’t believe it,” station owner (Anna Maria Horsford) says when seeing Bobby Soul (Roger Kabler) for the first time. “I hired a white man!” Will Bobby, a Robin Williams sound-alike, keep his job despite being white? Not without enduring some pretty low-brow racial jokes, it seems. Maybe his picture got lost in the mail. “Or his pigment,” someone adds.

* “Secret Service,” an NBC drama series, already premiered. Cases from the files of the Secret Service--allegedly--are re-enacted here with all the dash and flair of cases from the files of the Postal Service.

* “Raven,” a CBS drama picked up after premiering as a summer series. Trained by Japanese masters, “the one called Raven” (Jeffrey Meek) is a butt-kicking martial arts expert and foe of the unmentionably evil Black Dragons who slew his father. While searching for his long-lost son and hanging out in Hawaii with his slovenly sidekick, Ski (Lee Majors), he selflessly risks his life to help other people in distress. Why? Because he’s the one called Raven.

* “The Heights,” a Fox drama, already premiered. For connoisseurs of dynamic rock music to chew bubble gum to, here is another of those ensemble dramas about youngish characters trying to find themselves. The largely uninvolving blue-collar protagonists of this series would like to find themselves performing on stage in a neighborhood band. There goes the neighborhood.

* “Melrose Place,” a Fox drama, already premiered. Again, characters in their 20s, this time residents of an apartment house trying to pursue their dreams and sort out their lives in a relatively upscale neighborhood. Or was that the gang from “The Round Table”? No, they’re squarer. Or “The Heights”? No, they’re poorer. Or “Beverly Hills, 90210?” No, they’re younger. Or. . . .

* “Martin,” a Fox comedy, already premiered. Martin Lawrence is a human din in a series featuring him as an outwardly macho, inwardly sensitive Detroit radio talk-show host. His mother and hot-blooded female neighbor are also played by Lawrence, whose comedy thus far consists mostly of clamor.

* “The Hat Squad,” a CBS drama premiering Wednesday. From Stephen J. Cannell, one of the most successful TV producers of the 1980s, this is the ultimate lobotomizing of television, a simply numbing series whose opening episode rousingly concludes with the incredible crime-stopping bungee jump of the decade.

The Concealed

The following series were unavailable for preview:

* “Class of ‘96,” the Fox drama about college freshmen premiering Oct. 27.

* “Key West,” a Fox drama that also will debut Oct. 27. A lottery-winning assembly line worker relocates to Key West, Fla. and becomes a newspaper reporter in a community of eccentrics.

* “Final Appeal,” an NBC reality series premiering Friday. A crime-oriented weekly probe of “potential injustice,” starting with the murder conviction and imprisonment of former Green Beret doctor Jeffrey MacDonald.

* “Great Scott!,” a Fox comedy premiering Sept. 27. A 14-year-old boy turns his daydreams and fantasies into an escape from the pressures of adolescence.

* “What Happened?,” an NBC reality series premiering Sept. 25. Ken Howard is host for a half hour exploring famous disasters and catastrophes (excluding the 1992-93 TV season).