TELEVISION: MISSION: PARANORMAL

CRIME FIGHTERS IN TWO NEW SERIES USE PSYCHIC POWERS TO PROTECT THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE

At first glance the new crime dramas Profiler (Saturdays, 10 p.m. EDT, NBC) and Millennium (Fridays, 9 p.m. EDT, Fox) seem like the sort of unwholesome entertainment that would send Bob Dole into a frenzied new round of Hollywood bashing. The shows share the same premise: a central character brings down Hannibal Lecter-type psychopaths by using an uncanny gift to see inside the criminal mind, literally envisioning the evildoers' motivations. In the process both series serve up images unusually brutal for prime-time TV: severed heads, bodies crackling in flames, victims buried alive, near naked women beaten and stabbed to death.

Yet...

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