TV REVIEWS : Tom Jones Plays Music-Show Host

How cool is Tom Jones? Cool enough that the alternative band EMF tells him in an interview segment he’s hosting that when they heard he was singing their hit “Unbelievable” in Las Vegas, it was the apex of their career. Cool enough not to flinch when a rambunctious cuss from the studio audience jumps on his back during a live duet of said EMF song. Cool enough that, in front of a modern rock crowd, he seems to know he’s a camp act to many of them without ever giving up his dignity as a class act.

It wouldn’t be unusual, as the saying goes, then, to find yourself tuning into “The Right Time With Tom Jones,” a six-episode British TV import airing here on VH-1 (premiering Sunday at 11:30 a.m.) with the pussycat-lover himself hanging with contemporary artists of assorted stripes. In the brief interview segments, he plays the dutiful Dick Clark role, but then steps out of “Bandstand” character to join his charges for tandem performances--resulting in such unusual joint appearances as that “Unbelievable” duet, or an unlikely pairing with Shakespears Sister on an old T. Rex rocker.

Each of the six installments focuses broadly on a specific genre. Sunday’s premiere episode (which repeats Tuesday at 5:30 p.m.) is one of the more predictable, having rhythm and blues as its theme and Joe Cocker and Curtis Stigers--who aren’t exactly among the field’s vanguard--as its guests. The chat is on the banal side, and so are some of the performances, but Jones brings unflaggingly reliable warhorse strength to his own renditions of “Shotgun” and the like.

The upcoming “pop” episode offers a few more wrinkles, with the EMF and Sister appearances, plus Erasure’s Andy Bell doing Abba’s “SOS” with the house band and Jones covering both Cole Porter and the Beatles. The incongruities get thicker with the “gospel” show, featuring Al Jarreau and Mica Paris, which defines its theme so loosely that the half-hour opens with Jones crooning Prince’s “Purple Rain” accompanied on guitar by Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour. No essential musical moments here, just eccentric ones destined to appeal to inveterate music buffs and gamblers alike.