Oh, I'm sorry, you've been a terrific contestant, but the correct answer is "The Chris Isaak Show," Showtime's new hourlong sitcom starring the semipopular San Francisco rocker as himself. It's an understandable mistake, though. In a blind taste test, the premise of "The Chris Isaak Show" could easily be mistaken for CBS's "Bette," which in itself is pretty alarming, since Isaak is supposed to be a hepcat and Bette Midler is, well, Bette Midler.

There's no getting around it: "Bette" was a debacle. Even on the elderly-skewing CBS, the sitcom's retro setting -- "big star with an improbably average home life," a throwback to 1950s shows starring Jack Benny and George Burns -- just didn't fly. Maybe Midler couldn't reach a fan base beyond, as David Letterman so diplomatically quipped, the "over-50, gay, male" set. Or maybe the problem was that those of us who adore Midler the balls-out, bawdy vaudevillian couldn't bear to watch her whittled down to a PG-rated diva who faked catfights with Dolly Parton and warbled that frickin' "wind beneath my wings" song for the millionth time. Maybe Midler really belongs on cable, where success is measured in smaller numbers and she could have unleashed her full Divine Miss M glory, raunchy Sophie Tucker jokes and all.

Come to think of it, maybe CBS should have signed up Isaak instead. You'd think he'd be a network demographer's dream, since he's so popular with women. True, he's no spring chicken. But how could he not skew younger than "Bette"? If you took out the gratuitous and not very interesting cuss words and naked stuff, "The Chris Isaak Show" would be ready for prime time -- even ready for CBS.

	The Chris Isaak Show (10 p.m. Mondays, Showtime) The Job (9:30 p.m. Wednesdays, ABC) Print story E-mail story

Executive-produced by Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider ("Northern Exposure"), "The Chris Isaak Show" has been compared to "The Larry Sanders Show" because of the celebrity drop-in factor (Minnie Driver, Stevie Nicks, Joe Walsh and Poison's Bret Michaels are among the guest stars playing themselves). But "The Chris Isaak Show" is no acerbic love/hate letter to stardom like "Larry Sanders"; there's no backstage dish, no wild rock star livin'. Yes, Isaak regularly consults naked oracle Mona (Bobby Jo Moore) for relationship advice. (She's modeled after a nude woman whose swimming image is projected into a fish tank at a San Francisco nightclub called Bimbo's.) But Mona is the most humorless, buttoned-up naked woman you've ever seen. "The Chris Isaak Show" gives us a portrait of a rock star whose life is every bit as dull as our own -- maybe even duller. Now, I ask you: What fun is that?

I've always found Isaak's rockabilly pop just a bit too tidy, his pompadour a bit too unmussed, his sparkly suits a bit too fetishistic, his lonesome-crooner pose a bit too, well, posed. And in "The Chris Isaak Show," Isaak is every bit the priss you'd expect from a guy who has his name spelled out on his guitar and his guitar strap.

In the show, Isaak is an earnest and sensitive chick magnet. He aims to please, but women are always storming out of his bedroom in a huff while he stumbles after them with a big question mark hanging over his head. When he's not being dumped, he lounges around the house in perfectly pressed jeans and shirts tucked in just so; he looks like Ricky Nelson waiting for the gang to drop by so he can play them his latest hit single. Chris is so square, his idea of a stiff drink is a tall, cool glass of Tang. He cheerfully makes small talk with his nonfamous neighbors. He puts out his own garbage cans; they have his name on them, just like his guitar. The guy may be a rock star, but, good Lord, he's a crashing bore.

Of course, Isaak is doing shtick here, playing up the "rock star next door" angle the same way Benny played up his penny-pinching image. And Isaak does have a folksy-klutzy sort of normal-guy charm. When a date asks him how he came up with the idea for his song "Blue Hotel," he looks into his creative soul and, amusingly, finds nothing there except a sign that says "Gone fishin'": "I was staying at this hotel, and it was blue. Painted blue. And ... the rest is history."

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