Go to TV & Radio Page

Go to Style Section

'Profiler'

In NBC's "Profiler," Ally Walker plays a character nearly identical to the hero of Fox's upcoming "Millennium," except that she's female. A photographer and psychic who lives with a cranky sculptor, she can divine the identity of a murderer by visiting the scene of the crime and then having black-and-white flashbacks accompanied by loud noises on the soundtrack.

The premiere, at 10 tonight on Channel 4, introduces us to Ally and to Robert Davi as the FBI man who wants her to come out of retirement and start solving cases again. She's in hiding because a certain rude serial killer calling himself the "Jack of All Trades" is lurking around somewhere with a big fat grudge against her.

Walker is easily gorgeous enough -- spookily gorgeous enough -- to be a Hitchcock heroine. Too bad Hitchcock isn't around anymore. Writer Cynthia Saunders and director John Patterson are pitifully poor substitutes who apparently saw "Silence of the Lambs" one too many times (like, maybe, twice?). It's all grim and nasty and depressing and disquietingly kinky.

The script is full of grisly details about the killer, known as the "Saturday Night Stalker," and his victims, all single, wealthy women who've had plastic surgery. Why don't the producers go all the way and have an announcer say, at the beginning of each show, "This week's homicidal maniac: A serial killer who preys on pretty girls!"

"Profiler" is not so much a crime series as a thoroughly unnecessary ordeal.