Fox Gets 'Glee.' Singing for Joy? Not Likely.

Fox broadcast network, casting about for "American Idol" synergy, has greenlighted a pilot from "Nip/Tuck" creator Ryan Murphy for "Glee," a one-hour comedy series about a small-town high school's very bad glee club.

The club is composed of the school's unpopular kids and is not just bad -- it's one of the worst in the whole country.

The Ohio school's Spanish teacher, who was a student there and part of the glee club way back when, takes over the club and heartwarming things start to happen. Or not.

Think "High School Musical" meets "Freaks and Geeks" meets "Popular" -- Murphy's short-lived WB series about a high school's most and least popular girls, who become stepsisters when their parents hook up, only the popular one gets run over and the unpopular one realizes she's gay -- or would have had the show made it to a third season, blah, blah, blah.

"Glee," which is now being cast, is Murphy's first TV project since FX, home of "Nip/Tuck," eighty-sixed his plans for a series called "Pretty Handsome," about a husband-father gynecologist who decides to undergo a sex change operation.

It was originally called "4 Oz.," which, Murphy explained at the time, was the weight of the human penis. That, The TV Column was told by no less an authority than Bay Harbor, Fla., sexual reassignment surgery center head Harold M. Reed (you may have seen him on NBC's "Today" show), is an exaggeration by a factor of two.

Anyway, with no trace of irony, the trades reported yesterday that when FX decided not to move forward with "The Show Formerly Known as '4 Oz.,' " Murphy decided to "exercise different creative muscles."

(Pause)

They also reported, after talking to Murphy, that "Glee" is a "wholesome comedy that the entire family can watch."

Call me crazy, but I'm guessing he was pulling their leg.

We are, after all, talking about Ryan Murphy and Fox and a 9 p.m. series.

Anyway, each episode will include the singing of multiple songs. Not new ones but already recorded tunes to which Fox has cleared broadcast rights. Kind of like on "American Idol." Maybe "Idol" leftover tunes?