The new Fox cop show "K-Ville" is not only set in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, but it's actually filmed there — bringing attention and a not-inconsiderable amount of money to the recovering city.

Good for them!

Unfortunately, "K-Ville" — despite its pretensions — is a rather run-of-the-mill cop show. And that's being somewhat generous.

Bad for us!

"K-Ville" (Monday, 8 p.m., Ch. 13) is two shows wrapped into one. But this is not not chocolate and peanut butter, which blend so nicely, but more like oil and vinegar. Or maybe chocolate and vinegar. Yuck.

Anthony Anderson stars as Marlin Boulet, a take-no-prisoners veteran of the New Orleans Police Department. Unlike many of his colleagues, he stayed at his post during Hurricane Katrina and the disaster that followed. And he's passionate about rebuilding the city and rebuilding his family life.

In Monday's premiere, he gets a new partner — Trevor Cobb (Cole Hauser), a veteran of the war in Afghanistan who isn't exactly forthcoming about himself or his past. He rubs Marlin the wrong way, but then pretty much everybody seems to rub Marlin the wrong way.

There's some very emotional stuff here, and Anderson proves, as he did in "The Shield," that he's a fantastic actor.

But he's stuck with a script that, in Monday's premiere, is full of villains who are about as realistic as Snidely Whiplash, and a shootout that looks like something out of "The A-Team."

Frankly, after watching the pilot I feared my reaction was too harsh. But then critics were sent a second episode, which looked like a cross between "The Dukes of Hazzard" (complete with Boss Hogg) and "Scooby-doo."

When the show's executive producer, Jonathan Lisco, took questions from TV critics a few weeks ago, his answers didn't exactly inspire confidence. One critic summed it up rather nicely, saying, "I couldn't decide whether you wanted to be a gritty, realistic show like 'NYPD Blue' or a wild and woolly show like 'Starsky & Hutch.' Which one is it?"

Not overly polite, perhaps, but the point is completely valid.

"Well, I would throw it back out to all and ask you, why, are those two mutually exclusive?" Lisco asked.

Um, yes. They absolutely are.

You can't have it both ways. You can't do a gritty police show and throw in ridiculous plots, over-the-top action sequences and — in the final moments of Monday's premiere — toss in a surprise about the background of one of your two leads that makes it utterly impossible for viewers to take seriously any of what they've just seen.

I won't give it away — lame though the big twist is, it wouldn't be fair to ruin the surprise. But it is not a pleasant surprise, because it's so dumb you sort of feel like you just wasted an hour of your life watching "K-Ville."

Fox is doing "K-Ville" a disservice by advertising it as a "landmark" series and making it appear much more serious than it actually is. (And much less, well, dopey.)

"We're not necessarily out to be only messaging in the wake of a big national disaster," Lisco said. "We're out to create entertainment, and I actually think that that balance is something we are very focused on in the show. We want to create entertainment; at the same time, we want to be socially relevant to the extent possible."

But what he's proving is that it's possible, while trying to be two things at once, to be neither.

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E-mail: pierce@desnews.com