Virtues, Vices From ‘Heaven’ and Two Shows Less Divine

Monday nights find prolific producer Aaron Spelling playing good cop/bad cop on the WB network.

The former symbolizes his sugary new “7th Heaven,” an inconsistent hour of drama about a minister’s family, the latter his steamy “Savannah”--betrayal, deceit, the works--a second-season returnee that needs all the prayers it can get. These two opposites run back to back.

As the fall season pushes forward, moreover, arriving tonight also are three UPN comedies, the mostly errant “Sparks” and the ordinary “Goode Behavior,” which are preceded by the unpreviewed “Malcolm & Eddie.”

Created by Brenda Hampton, “7th Heaven” is a prime-time anomaly in introducing protagonists whose everyday lives and religion are inseparable. Even rarer, in doing so it neither ridicules religion by dismissing pious folks as zombie fanatics nor attaches to religion a halo of blinding luminosity that would shame even Charlton Heston. Instead, it finds the mellower middle, religion in the sunlit Camden household being something of a nice fit, as comfortable as the stuffed furniture.

Eric Camden (Stephen Collins) and his wife, Annie (Catherine Hicks), pitch no sanctimonious lectures at their five kids ranging from toddler- to teenhood. Eric is a family man who happens to be a minister, one with a sense of humor about his line of work.

When his 16-year-old son, Matt (Barry Watson), won’t stop smoking, Eric devises something creative to at once frighten him from tobacco and draw him toward church. And when his 10-year-old son, Simon (David Gallagher), vows effusively (“I swear”) to care for a dog if his parents will please just get him one, Dad playfully admonishes: “Don’t swear.”

Moreover, “7th Heaven” extends its family values to a topic that is usually taboo in prime time. Not only is menstruation casually discussed, but a tampon becomes a source of humor. Very nice.

Yet please!

Eric’s grating smugness is not the only serious problem here. The Camdens at times are this season’s least humanoid extraterrestrials. It’s a sweet touch having 12-year-old Lucy (Beverly Mitchell) impatiently pout about not yet being “a woman,” for example. But things really get loopy when Eric inquires after she’s locked herself in the bathroom, “By the way, did you start your period yet?” And this all-knowing patriarch is somehow stunned by his daughter’s explosion of embarrassed anger? But she later tells him when she does menstruate? And then asks him to “run to the drugstore for me” to buy you know what?

Equally surreal is 14-year-old Mary (Jessica Biel) breaking ground in sibling relations when asking her older brother, Matt, how to kiss a boy: “I don’t know where my hands go or his hands or my face or his face and his lips and my lips.” And then Mary asking to practice on Matt “so I can have some kind of experience.”

Family candor and intimacy are fine ideals, but in the above instances so far beyond the earthly norm that they erode the credibility of “7th Heaven,” as does a somber addendum clumsily grafted to the hour for the purpose of wringing tears through the ending credits.

Even if you feel manipulated, though, don’t swear, for “7th Heaven” bears keeping an eye on.

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Continuing this gynecological splurge, meanwhile, a vastly overcooked running gag on the premiere of “Sparks” is premenstrual syndrome, which is blamed for fits of hysteria gripping Darice Mayberry (Kym Whitley), secretary at Sparks, Sparks & Sparks, the Los Angeles law firm where this noisy comedy is centered. It’s an office where fake body casts for clients are as prominent as law books.

Very broad, but rarely rewarding, “Sparks” is a hairpin turn for its oft-acclaimed creator Ed. Weinberger (“The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Taxi,” “The Cosby Show”). The senior Sparks is Alonzo (James Avery), father of his law partners, sleazy, fast-talking Maxey (Miguel Nunez Jr.) and stodgy Greg (Terrence Howard). Joining them is the firm’s new associate, Stanford law grad Wilma Cuthbert (Robin Givens).

Although smart as well as fetching, Wilma exists in the premiere solely as an object of salivation, the major drooler being Maxey. He’s also about the only source of humor, thanks to Nunez’s good comic timing.

Maxey’s exploitative relationship with his brother, Greg, is much like the scheming Kingfish’s with Andy. How curious that the clowning tone of “Amos ‘n’ Andy”--a radio-bred CBS comedy series of the early 1950s that was widely syndicated until driven from the airwaves in 1966 because it was said to deride blacks--survives without controversy in many 1990s sitcoms with African American casts. If only “Sparks” were as funny.

Slapsticky “Goode Behavior” is only marginally better, with bouncing sitcom veteran Sherman Hemsley creating his usual din as scam artist Willie Goode. He leaves the slammer and takes up residence with his son, Franklin (Dorien Wilson), an ambitious college professor who wants no part of his long-estranged father.

Franklin’s wife, Barbara (Alex Datcher), somehow arranges this unlikely rapprochement without telling him. Nor does she inform her horrified husband, when he does learn the worst, that Willie is wearing a house arrest anklet and will be sleeping in his cherished new study. Go figure.

Naturally, Willie disrupts Franklin’s orderly life, and as a bonus, appears to jeopardize the dean’s appointment that his son is hoping for. Willie says he’s reformed, but has he really? A more compelling mystery is the humor in initial episodes of “Goode Behavior,” which relies more on noise than witty writing.

When Hemsley is on camera, the screen appears to tilt decidedly in his direction. Yet “Goode Behavior” is at its best when Wilson (who proved his skills as Martin Tupper’s shallow best friend in HBO’s “Dream On”) is given equal mugging time. Even its best, however, is rarely good enough.

* “7th Heaven” airs Mondays at 8 p.m. on WB. “Good Behavior” airs at 9 and “Sparks” at 9:30 Monday nights on UPN.