MIDSEASON SHIFTS AND SHOVES

It’s time for TV’s midseason metamorphosis, when networks dump their weak-witted sitcoms and struggling dramas and introduce ... well, more of the same.

OK, OK, let’s give them a chance. Maybe a butterfly or two will emerge.

A moment, however, for a couple of the dearly departed. The big loss: NBC’s fine family drama “Against the Grain,” set in a football-crazy Texas town. Despite good reviews, it couldn’t get a ratings first down.

Also gone is ABC’s lightly plotted but charmingly played “Moon Over Miami,” a “Moonlighting” couldabeen. The network claims it’s on hiatus, but expect that to be a permanent condition.

Now, the contenders.

Five new series are already up and running, including ABC’s “Birdland” (10 p.m. Wednesday), starring Brian Dennehy as a hospital psychiatric director. CBS has “Burke’s Law,” with Gene Barry picking up the sleuth role he played 30 years ago (9 p.m. Friday).

Fox gave the midseason nod to “The George Carlin Show” (9:30 p.m. Sunday), featuring the comedian’s verbal antics, and to Henry Winkler as a Rush Limbaugh-type in “Monty” (8 p.m. Tuesday).

“The Critic,” a half-hour cartoon from the producers of Fox’s “The Simpsons,” airs at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday. Jon Lovitz provides the voice of Jay Sherman, a pudgy, acerbic New York film critic coping with a tough boss, a spiteful ex-wife and lousy movies. The bright spot is his young son.

A pack of other shows wait in the wings. ABC is staking its hopes on a mix of sitcoms, dramas, a news magazine and one animated comedy series.

“Byrds of Paradise” from producer Steven Bochco (riding high with “NYPD Blue”) stars “thirtysomething” alumnus Timothy Busfield. He plays a Yale professor who moves with his three children to Hawaii after his wife is murdered.

“Thunder Alley” features Ed Asner as a retired stock-car racer who opens his Indianapolis home to his newly divorced daughter and her trio of children.

Comedian Ellen DeGeneres stars in “These Friends of Mine.” She’s a single woman in Los Angeles, a Mary Tyler Moore for the ‘90s, say the producers.

Jackee Harry and Tim Reid star in “Sister, Sister” as the single parents of adopted twin girls. When the girls discover each other at age 13, Harry and Reid decide to move in together.

Throw another news magazine on the TV fire: “Turning Point,” with correspondents Meredith Vieira, John Donvan, Don Kladstrup and Deborah Amos, premieres March 9. The twist: It features one story and one reporter per outing.

CBS has three comedies and two dramas in the wings.

“Tom” bows at 8 p.m. Wednesday, March 2, with Tom Arnold starring as a working-class man who tries to build a dreamhouse for his family on a Kansas farm--next to a city dump. Arnold and wife Roseanne are co-creators.

The drama “Traps” starring George C. Scott as a veteran homicide chief and Dan Cortese as his nonconformist grandson, also a detective, follows at 9 p.m.

Karen Allen and Terence Knox star as husband and wife in the drama “Down Home,” a chronicle of an extended family living along North Carolina’s tide waters, premiering at 9 p.m. on Friday, March 5. Don’t be surprised if the title changes on this one.

“Muddling Through” is to be an offbeat comedy starring Stephanie Hodge as a woman who has spent three years in jail for shooting her unfaithful husband, and who now wants her old life back.

Producer Norman Lear of “All in the Family” fame is back with “704 Hauser.” It’s “Family” in reverse: the sitcom stars John Amos as a blue-collar liberal bedeviled by an ultraconservative son.

NBC has announced a single midseason entry so far. “Winnetka Road” comes from Aaron Spelling, that master of serial drama, and stars Ed Begley Jr., Meg Tilly and Josh Brolin in a Midwestern saga.

A pair of Fox shows, one a sober-minded sitcom and the other a reality-based series, also will be courting viewers soon.

So many shows, so few time slots. Incumbents, do you know where your ratings are?