'Wonderfalls' isn't 'Arcadia'

First things first. "Wonderfalls" is not a rip-off of "Joan of Arcadia."

Yes, they're both about young women who receive messages from beyond. Both women have troubled families.

But both shows were developed at the same time — a year ago. Tonight's premiere of "Wonderfalls" (8 p.m., Ch. 13) has been sitting on Fox's shelf almost that long. So any similarities are strictly coincidental.

And, despite the similarities, they're also very different.

"Wonderfalls" centers on 24-year-old underachiever Jaye Tyler (Caroline Dhavernas), a Brown graduate who is working a dead-end job at a Niagara Falls gift shop. She's snarky and snide with a serious superiority complex, but she's thrown for a loop when inanimate objects start talking to her. Starting with a defective lion figurine, various inanimate animals start holding conversations with her and giving her advice.

We're never quite sure whether she's nuts or whether she's getting advice from a higher being, but when she listens, Jaye helps other people solve their problems. And sometimes solves her own problems with her family — her parents (Diana Scarwid and William Sadler), her brother (Lee Pace) and her sister (Katie Finneran). Or maybe with her best friend (Tracie Thomas) or a potential love interest (Tyrone Leitso). But more often the stories are about complete strangers, which sort of wastes a fine regular cast.

The pilot episode shows promise, but the three succeeding episodes provided to critics don't build much on that promise. "Wonderfalls" has a lot going for it, but it's trying a tad too hard to be quirky instead of just letting the quirkiness flow. And Jaye is a tad too downbeat and cynical to make her a character you're rooting for.

Not that it matters much. By scheduling it on Friday at 8 p.m. for the next seven weeks, Fox has virtually assured a quick demise for "Wonderfalls." And Fox Entertainment president Gail Berman's theory that the show can attract the "Joan of Arcadia" crowd when that show ends over on CBS seems, at best, a double-edged sword.

It just makes "Wonderfalls" look more like a "Joan" rip-off. Even though it isn't.

TOUCHING EVIL (7 and 9 p.m., USA): Translating English to American doesn't always work — just look at how NBC mucked up "Coupling" last fall.

But USA has done a darn good job of bringing "Touching Evil" across the Atlantic. The Americanization of this British series is one of this season's better dramas.