TV REVIEW : ‘TV Nation’ Helps Beat the Doldrums of Summer Reruns

Just when it seemed that summer television was about to vanish into a black hole of reruns and other programs people aren’t watching (yes, baseball, we’re talking about you), the return of Michael Moore’s “TV Nation” is here to save one night--Friday--of a bad season.

Now, Moore’s scathing, zippy satire--seen last summer on NBC--is where it belongs: On the Fox network, where it can smack down CBS by correctly claiming that it is “better than ’60 Minutes.’ ”

How can it not be, what with Moore organizing the Louis Bruno for President campaign, Janeane Garofalo heading an invasion of the beaches of Greenwich, Conn., and Louis Theroux profiling the mom-and-pop Crime Scenes Clean-Up company.

Garofalo’s and Rusty Cundieff’s reports are especially sly digs at the super-serious “60 Minutes” mode. Garofalo comically confronts townspeople who have strange ideas about the concept of private property, and Cundieff, as an African American, gets the last laugh as Mississippi is the last state to ratify the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery. Stupid laws are a satirist’s best friend.

But Moore’s best friend appears to be Crackers, the Corporate Crime Fighting Chicken, who drives his filmmaker pal around New York streets trying to catch corporate criminals red-handed. Crackers (actually a guy in a conspicuously large chicken suit) manages to nudge some companies to do the right thing, and the remaining “TV Nation” episodes will follow him around the country squawking for justice.

This is as funny as anything in Moore’s “Roger & Me,” and the balance of correspondents keeps the barbed laughs going. Karen Duffy and the droll genius Steven Wright will appear in future episodes.

Tonight, Theroux is a complete crackup as he inspects a family business devoted to cleaning up grisly murder scenes. Garofalo is simply nervier than you or me, and ex-con Louis Bruno shows some chutzpah declaring his candidacy at the same time and place as Bob Dole.

If Fox doesn’t give Moore a permanent niche after this, he ought to send Crackers after Rupert Murdoch.

* “TV Nation” airs at 8 tonight on Fox (Channels 11 and 6).