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'Early Edition': Stop the Presses!

"I don't believe this," says the hero's pal. "Neither do I," says the hero. "Neither will you," says the grumpy old critic to his long-suffering readers, who nevertheless haven't suffered quite so long as he has.

"Early Edition," the object of all this disbelief, is a new CBS drama series about a man whose copy of the Chicago Sun-Times arrives one day early. He literally gets tomorrow's news today, and he doesn't know quite what to do with it.

It doesn't occur to him to use the advance information to, say, win the lottery every day, become a rich man and share his wealth with the community. After all, you couldn't get a series out of that. But it remains to be seen whether the producers can get a series out of their premise either: that the man tries to use this new-found power to set the world straight, one news story at a time.

In the premiere, at 9 tonight on Channel 9, the "Touched by an Angel" sentimentality is slathered on with a trowel. Fortunately Gary Hobson, who gets the early editions, is played by a very likable actor, Kyle Chandler (of ABC's long-ago "Homefront"), and he does his best to keep Hobson's chumpiness from going totally sap-happy.

Hobson's choices represent, apparently, the kind and charitable side of human nature, while his obnoxious pest of a friend, played with very obnoxious pestiness by Fisher Stevens, tries to get him over to the dark side, or at least the selfish side.

Here's one compromise that's worked out: Hobson does go to an off-track betting parlor to try out his new gift, but when it works and he amasses oodles of dough, he gives it all to Marissa (Shanesia Davis), a blind African American secretary, so she can buy a Seeing Eye dog. Then Hobson goes hippity-hop down to the police department to tell them there'll be a big bank robbery tomorrow and they ask him how he knows and he says he just does and they think he's loony and you can predict the rest, though you probably have much better things to do.

The concept is a little confusing. If the headline said, "Finland Declares War on Canada," would that mean it was definitely going to happen, or that it would happen unless Hobson flew to Helsinki and averted catastrophe? And then if he did, wouldn't the Sun-Times be awfully embarrassed to have such an erroneous headline?

One wants to encourage wholesome, nonviolent television. So maybe "Early Edition" should get a few automatic points for niceness. But it's all a little too creamy-dreamy to have much impact. Even the converted will probably resent being preached to like this.