‘Someone’s At The Door’ In ‘Gothic’ New Series On Cbs Enhances High Quality Of Friday Night Viewing

“Someone’s at the do’ …

Someone’s at the door …

Someone’s at the door …”

And it’s a welcome, if terrifying visitor.

“American Gothic” promises to be the season’s best new series and confirms a prime-time truth lost in NBC and ABC’s weigh-in braggadocio about “ER” vs. “Murder One.”

Friday from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m., not Thursday from 9 to 11, is the best night on television, and this fall will give the local octoplex a run for its money with back-to-back watch-it-or-tape-it quandaries.

At 9 p.m., Fox’s paranoid “The X-Files” will oppose “Picket Fences,” CBS’ superb social-conscience melodrama. At 10 p.m., NBC’s “Homicide,” best cop show on TV, goes up against CBS’ “American Gothic,” a manipulative good-vs.-evil fantasy (the pilot is this Friday). Save $7.50 and parking hassles, kick off your shoes, load the VCR and turn on the TV. And after “American Gothic” goes off, keep the night light on.

“American Gothic” is a brilliantly scheduled nightcap to both “The X-Files” and “Picket Fences.” It’s set in fictional Trinity, S.C. Biblical symbolism aside, Trinity is really the Rome, Wis., of “Picket Fences” turned upside down. It’s small-town Hell.

If the fallible folk of “Picket Fences” fairly bleed conscience week in and week out, “American Gothic” hero Sheriff Buck (who conjures that rusty high-school-lit term “antihero” better than anyone else on TV) is anti-conscience.

“Conscience,” he says, “is just the fear of getting caught.” But in “American Gothic’s” endless foolery with our own takes on right and wrong, Buck is actually a lawman with powerful, if sociopathic, ethics.

“I’ve heard it said that the American dream is a thing of the past,” Buck narrates in the show’s introduction. “That the basic tenets of home, job and family are slipping away … well, not in my town. Where I come from, that dream is still a reality. … Of course you have to know who’s boss. For those who follow my lead, life can be a paradise, but for those who don’t, life can be a mighty rough road.”

With images of Mark Fuhrman lingering amid America’s current hazy distrust of government authority, could the timing be better for viewers to throw darts at and stick pins into a character like Sheriff Buck? He’s every bit as handsome or courtly as Mark Fuhrman - or a Jeffrey MacDonald or a Ted Bundy.

His main quarry is children - namely, Caleb (stunningly played by Lucas Black), a little boy with whom he has a relationship that is the stuff of surprise endings. After seeing Buck strut his murderous stuff, some viewers will chill to the bone when Buck visits the local schoolhouse to charm the children into getting the information he wants.

“I mean, this is not a man who wants to be viewed as a villain,” the show’s creator and chief writer told TV critics. “He wants to be viewed as a benefactor and someone they can trust, whom they can look up to, and someone who will be their protector. That’s how he views himself.” In this show, good and evil have ambiguous consequences.

“American Gothic” is melodrama, but it’s also the spooky equal of “The X-Files” in a fall season full of contenders like UPN’s “Nowhere Man” and Fox’s “Strange Luck.” As in life, some characters have premonitions - some vague, others explicit. “Someone’s at the do”’ is, in fact, “American Gothic’s” catchphrase, like “The truth is out there” on “The X-Files.” In this case, the someone is the bogeyman that is Sheriff Lucas Buck.

Although it’s less precious than “Twin Peaks” was even at the beginning, it’s easy to imagine “American Gothic” going the same self-conscious route from water-cooler rave to a big bore. But CBS already has taken the right step by retaining several violent sequences (which don’t repel in the manner of the violence in so many other TV shows, because this is so obviously a Grimm fantasy). And it’s fun to see a TV show’s trailer-park culture references and jokes, now a cliche, actually click for a change: Sherriff Buck, in the mood to kill, whistles the theme to “The Andy Griffith Show.”

Even the creative talents of “American Gothic” are a bit of a sick joke, but a funny and strangely reassuring one. The actor who so hatefully plays Sherriff Buck is Gary Cole, who’s had his creep roles but is best known for playing Mr. Have a Nice Day, Mike Brady, in last summer’s “The Brady Bunch Movie.” Above all, there’s the show’s creator, whom I didn’t name before: Shaun Cassidy. The ‘70s teen idol who rotted out the fillings of a generation with “Da Doo Ron Ron” and “That’s Rock and Roll,” has dredged up something mighty dark from his soul. It’s all Shirley Jones’ fault, Cassidy told TV critics, referring to his mom, the matriarch of “The Partridge Family.”

“You know, I think that we’re all a little more complex than people know. And people aren’t always what they seem, and I think that our show is about that.”