Critics are always complaining that TV is too timid, too tired and too obsessed with focus groups to try anything truly interesting.

So it gives me no pleasure to say that, of two network series premiering within 24 hours of each other this week, CBS' genre-bending "mystery drama with music" falls flat on its face, while Fox's latest music competition succeeds by coloring neatly inside the lines.

It's tempting to put "Viva Laughlin" in the so-bad-it's-good category, but its failure isn't extravagant enough to be entertaining. Near the end of the pilot, in fact, I actually found myself exhibiting signs of the fight-or-flight response - pounding pulse, dry mouth, etc. - when I realized that yet another bizarre musical number was about to unfold.

The format weaves familiar pop songs into the story of Ripley (Lloyd Owen, "Monarch of the Glen"), an entrepreneur and family man hoping to open a casino in Laughlin, Nev., the poor man's Las Vegas.

When a backer pulls out, our hero tries to make a deal with the devil, in the person of Nicky Fontana (Hugh Jackman, "X-Men"), a Vegas biggie whose devotion to the dark side is helpfully illustrated by a giant neon sign in his office that says "SIN."

An early scene in which Ripley strides confidently through his casino-to-be while singing "Viva Las Vegas" isn't awful, but even if you're expecting it, the effect is uncomfortable.

For one thing, Owen sort of halfway sings, halfway lip-synchs to the famous Elvis Presley original, as if he's not sure whether it's karaoke night or an Elvis impersonator's competition. For another, he jumps up on a table way too soon in the game, leaving you with the suspicion that there's a lot more table-jumping where that came from.

And there is, there is. Before you can say "Please allow me to introduce myself," there's Jackman half-singing along with Mick Jagger on "Sympathy for the Devil," in a production number complete with chorus cuties into whose waiting arms he falls backward from - yes! - another table.

Things start to look up during an initially music-free interlude with Melanie Griffith as a shameless tart named Bunny, a woman with a fabulous body and a mouth that brings to mind the line from "The First Wives Club" where Goldie Hawn's doctor warns her that if he gives her any more collagen, her lips will look like they got stuck in a pool drain.

Griffith - who, like Jackman, plays a recurring rather than a weekly character - is in a class by herself.

Who else could get away with a line like the one Bunny delivers to Ripley, her once and perhaps future lover, about his being more than just "hubby-poo and daddy-da and all that Norman Rockwell crap"?

Actually, I'm not sure Griffith does get away with it. But I prefer her speaking to singing along with Blondie, inevitably, on "One Way or Another."

A murder is committed, blessedly unaccompanied by music or dancing, and in an unrelated development, Ripley beats up a 42-year-old theater professor who's dating Ripley's 18-year-old daughter, one of the prof's students. Why not just blow the whistle on Prof. Perv and get him fired? Well, for that matter, why jump around on tables when you've got a casino to open?

DB Woodside ("24") and Madchen Amick ("Twin Peaks") show up as Nicky's faithful assistant and Ripley's faithful wife. Neither one gets to sing.

Eventually, the pilot lurches to a close, but not before Ripley announces to an underling that he's "livin' the dream," and, with grim inexorability, shifts into Bachman-Turner Overdrive with "Let It Ride."

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