“The Beat”

Tonight at 9 on WWOR/Ch.9

IF “The Blair Witch Project” married “NYPD Blue,” their baby would be “The Beat,” UPN’s new cop series premiering tonight.

It’s got the grit, grime and even potential greatness of the old “NYPD Blue,” but for reasons I hope never to understand, it’s also got stupid, tricky camera work — a surveillance camera, for one, and a hand-held videocam a la “The Blair Witch Project.”

I think this camera work would even get on your nerves if you were lost in the woods and were being terrorized by an unseen witch who kept eating your friends. And really, if I wanted to watch cops on a hidden camera, I’d hang out in 7-11 or Dunkin Donuts.

“The Beat” is good enough to stand on it’s own and doesn’t need any tricks. And why, by the way, is there a hidden camera in the roll call room anyway?

There is however, some very compelling stuff.

You’ve got two white cops, Zane Marinelli, (Mark Ruffalo), and Mike Dorigan, (Derek Cecil) who are friends with mostly other white cops. Most of the black cops are disgruntled because white cops have just killed yet another black perp. I know — how far-fetched can you get?

We follow these two cops around to calls involving a pigeon killer; a traffic ticket, (“What’s the problem? Driving while black?” says the motorist); a jumper; and a photographer’s studio filled with models (who seem to have been dressed by John Travolta in “Stayin’ Alive!”).

There’s also a cab accident, (requisite Indian cab driver: “I’m from India I have weapons of mass destruction.” Oy, as they say in Pakistan) and the suicide of a teen girl who killed herself because boys made fun of her.

(Of course if shows like this stopped showing perfectly near-naked perfect babes begging for “it” every five seconds, then maybe unattractive teen age girls wouldn’t be hanging themselves, but that’s another story.)

Added to the mix are the cops’ personal lives: Mike is engaged to a medical intern, Elizabeth Waclawek, (Poppy Montgomery) who’s getting the wedding jitters, and Zane has just moved his new girlfriend Beatrice, a pyro-psycho into his apartment.

Zane, of course, doesn’t realize she’s a pyro-psycho. He figures she’s just your run-of-the-mill girlfriend who barges into the men’s shower room at the precinct, throws the other cops out, (here’s where they need that surveillance camera!) and proceeds to do things to Zane his mother wouldn’t approve of. Who acts like this?

Fortunately, Zane’s mother isn’t around to see this because unfortunately she was brutally beaten to death by his father during Zane’s 9th birthday party.

So, now that I’ve complained so much, why did I say I like it? Because the acting is really, really good, (Ruffalo is like a likeable Tony Danza), the writing is crisp, the plots are good, and the whole deal is produced by Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana (“Homicide: Life on the Street” and “Oz”) so it’s believable, even if it isn’t.

Yes, I’ll watch it again — if I’m not too busy breaking into shower stalls at my local precinct.