Suppose you take "Hawaii Five-O," cross it with "CSI," throw in more than a bit of "Lethal Weapon" and "Starsky & Hutch" and, well, toss in just about every other cop-show device and convention from just about every other cop show in TV history — and you'd end up with NBC's "Hawaii."

Talk about trying to be all things to all people.

Any cook can tell you that lots of ingredients don't necessarily make a dish tasty. And while "Hawaii" (7 p.m., Ch. 5) is entertaining in spots — and the scenery is beautiful — the show is hardly memorable.

You don't have to look for the cliches — they leap off the screen at you. Michael Beihn ("The Terminator") stars as Sean Harrison, a legendary detective whose personal life has had to take a backseat to his drive to solve crimes.

He's partnered with John Declan (Sharif Atkins of "ER"), an ex-Chicago cop who's a fish-out-of-water in Honolulu. And he can't swim. (That's supposed to be funny.)

There's wisecracking between the two of them, but it pales beside the wisecracking-run-amok employed by partners Danny Edwards (Ivan Sergei of "Crossing Jordan") and Christopher Gains (Eric Balfour of "Six Feet Under"). They hardly have time to solve crimes, what with all the jokes.

And not only are the jokes not funny, but Sergei and Balfour have even less chemistry than they do talent.

Oh, and they're rebels who don't like to take orders. Which doesn't sit well with their tough-but-fair captain, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa ("The Last Emperor").

There's also a love-triangle involving two of the detectives and a policewoman (newcomer Aya Sumika).

You've even got the cops-eat-donuts cliche with comic relief from her rotund partner (Peter Navy Tuiasosopo).

Not that this is a comedy by any means. It wants to be a comedy/action/drama/procedural . . . and so on and so on. It has a retro feel to it, harkening back to cop shows of the '60s and '70s, with car chases and gun battles.

But there are a lot of things on the screen in "Hawaii" that viewers wouldn't have seen in decades gone by. Frankly, tonight's premiere is gross and violent in a "CSI" sort of way. (Only far less interesting.) The main case involves a series of beheadings that the detectives first discover when one of the decapitated bodies is found burned up by lava.

Ick.

And that love triangle makes for yet another scene that's more than a bit adult for the show's early time slot.

The most amazing thing about "Hawaii" is that its creator/writer, Jeff Eastin, managed to find work again after the abominable "Shasta McNasty," which polluted the airwaves on UPN a few years back.

The worst thing about "Hawaii," however, is just that it's such a missed opportunity. It would be great to have a show filmed on the islands that was worth tuning in to see every week.

This isn't it, however.

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E-mail: pierce@desnews.com