TV REVIEW | ’WONDERFALLS’

Orders Come From a Talking Lion (Made of Wax)

By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN

Published: March 12, 2004

nimism is an occupational hazard of work in retail. There’s all that inventory and the imperative to move it, to say nothing of the clerk’s tormenting hours alone on the floor, staring at the stuff. Jaye Tyler (Caroline Dhavernas) of "Wonderfalls," a new drama that begins tonight on Fox, works in a gift shop at Niagara Falls. Jammed with froggies, stereopticons and scented candles, as well as a vending machine that makes warped wax creatures, the shop would make anyone hallucinate.

And Jaye, 24, does. First, a wax lion talks to her, giving her "Field of Dreams"-style orders. ("Help her get her words out.") After some resistance and deadpan doubts about her sanity, Jaye follows the lion’s instructions, which lead to romantic matches and career changes in the people around her - all of them for the good. Later, knickknacks everywhere start telling her what to do.

With a dry voice, high color and tomboy delivery, Ms. Dhavernas is delightful as a supernatural young woman. (There seems to be no end of actresses around to take the place of the irreplaceable Sarah Michelle Gellar.) Jaye lives in a tricked-out trailer, which makes her seem resourceful; she also has a degree in philosophy from Brown. And in the second episode we learn that she can write.

But for now she keeps her talents out of sight, using them clandestinely to improve other people’s lives. She keeps aloof from her designated boyfriend. She’s all remote potency and no action.

A fantasy of benevolent control, the same fantasy on display in Darren Star’s "Miss Match" and Jane Austen’s "Emma," drives this show. Even when Jaye, who is superficially a curmudgeon and whom the press material dubs a narcissist, doesn’t mean to help people, she does. From her unassuming role as a clerk, she turns out to be not only sublimely magnanimous but super-empowered to accomplish her kind initiatives. Maybe this is the single woman’s answer to the single man’s comic-book obsession with other forms of secret power.

"Wonderfalls" starts off strong, beautifully shot and written with wit; the kitschy graphic transitions between scenes - many of them drawing from the paraphernalia of tourism - play well. But the next few episodes drag a little. It may be too much to ask the lovely Ms. Dhavernas, who is almost never off camera, to command an hourlong drama, even with her inanimate accomplices.

WONDERFALLS

Fox, tonight at 9, Eastern and Pacific times; 8, Central time.

Todd Holland, Bryan Fuller and Tim Minear, executive producers; Paul Rabwin and Michael Maschio, producers; directed by Mr. Holland. Produced by 20th Century Fox Television and Regency Television.

WITH: Caroline Dhavernas (Jaye Tyler), Katie Finneran (Sharon Tyler), Diana Scarwid (Karen Tyler), William Sadler (Darrin Tyler), Tyron Leitso (Eric), Lee Pace (Aaron Tyler) and Tracie Thoms (Mahandra).

"Touching Evil," a "Monk"-like detective series that starts tonight on USA, brings modest but good tidings of the future: Volvos will resume their rightful boxy shape. Set in 2007 and 2008, the two-hour pilot episode features a malevolent biotech baron, Ronald Hinks (Zeljko Ivanek), who drives what looks like a nice yellow 240.

And according to "Touching Evil," people a few years hence will recover from close-range gunshots to the forehead, suffering only character-building frontal-lobe damage. This happens to the hero, David Creegan (Jeffrey Donovan). As we learn tonight, Creegan was an ordinary detective before he was shot, but now he’s an almighty one, working for the F.B.I.’s Organized and Serial Crime Unit. His fairly conservative madness is signaled by his unclose shave, his layered Abercrombie look and his unwillingness to follow rules.

In childhood, Hinks witnessed a friend’s drowning and did nothing. (Didn’t this same event inspire Phil Collins’s "In the Air Tonight"?) But Hinks feels joy instead of guilt, and he lives to reproduce the high of not helping his friend by not helping - rather hurting - other people. Creegan, abetted by his partner, the rule-following Susan Branca (Vera Farmiga), eventually smokes him out.

Based on a British show of the same daft title, "Touching Evil," which is dull, hits enough British marks to give away its origins. An early clue to the crime is a primrose, spotted by our lobeless Sherlock, and peripheral characters in big houses talk as if they’re from the North Country.

The tension between a renegade detective and a by-the-book one, however, has an even more impressive provenance. Some historians date this exhausted conceit to the third century. Others put the date even earlier.

Touching Evil

USA, tonight at 9, Eastern and Pacific times; 8, Central time