How many serial killers can possibly be living within Los Angeles city limits? The producers of “The Inside,” television’s latest spin on the gruesome crime-investigation drama, seem to think there’s an unlimited supply; its elite group of FBI investigators have so many wacko killers to choose from that, at the weekly staff meeting of the Los Angeles Violent Crimes Unit, you have to really wow the boss with something truly gruesome, or he’ll pass off the case to the guys from “NUMB3RS”or “CSI.” This Fox show – debuting tomorrow night at 9 p.m. – thinks itself to be television’s version of “Silence of the Lambs,” but it’s not the lambs that are screaming anymore; it’s us, yelling, “Enough already!”

Do I really need to tell you that this gaggle of G-men and women are impossibly gorgeous and demographically correct? With the exception of craggy Peter Coyote as the supervisor, this corps of well-dressed and coiffed FBI agents look like sales clerks at Armani Exchange. The central character – a newly arrived agent named Rebecca Locke – is essentially a rip-off of the Clarice Starling character from the Thomas Harris novels about the pursuit of Hannibal Lecter; she’s gotten her job because she’d been abducted by criminals as a child, and flashes back to her trauma every 10 minutes or so. She’s also derived from the hotter-than-thou philosophy that pervades all Fox shows, to a fault. Rachel Nichols, the “actress” who plays agent Locke, looks about 19, and we don’t buy for a second that this bubbly blonde suffers from some weird connection to the criminal mind. This woman has nothing to be sad about, except that her new series might be canceled before she earns enough money to pay for her Porsche.

Lately the networks have started providing critics with multiple episodes of their new series to watch, presumably hoping that we’ll appreciate these shows better if we see where they’re headed. However, the strategy can backfire if – as in the case of “The Inside” – the show’s going nowhere. It’s a bit of a surprise, given the fact that the creative team behind it includes Imagine Television and writers from “The X Files” and “24.” Creators Howard Gordon and Tim Minear show none of their previous flair for the original and macabre in this glut of stale television staples. This show offers such tired crime-show character re-treads as the savvy computer technician, the handsome hothead, and the neurotic psychologist. And Virgil “Web” Webster – the supervisory special agent played by Mr. Coyote – derives his character from every overbearing, my-way-or-the-highway boss you’ve ever seen on television. The sleepy-eyed Mr. Coyote deserves better, and so do we.

This series almost seems to go backward in time; the beats of the show’s plots in the first three episodes seem achingly familiar to anyone who follows crime drama with any regularity. Even the grisly crime-scene shockers don’t shock anymore – characters routinely get their faces cut off, their limbs severed, and their eye sockets eaten out by bugs. (The recent “CSI” season finale directed by Quentin Tarantino, about a cop buried alive and being eaten by fire ants, pushed the envelope of disgust much further than anything on display here.) In Episode One – when a supposed serial killer is arrested, and Special Agent Locke leaves the crime scene, with the cameras following her. Is there a soul out there who doesn’t think the real killer remains at large, and likely to pounce at any second? Come on, guys – we didn’t just buy our television sets. Episode Two was moderately more interesting; it included a fun performance by 1980s heartthrob Hart Bochner as a creepy sex fiend in a mask. In Episode Three, the killer turns out to be – surprise! – a loner who works for the post office. I swear, I’m not making this stuff up. And neither, as it turns out, are the writers of “The Inside.”

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If CNN is looking to spruce up its ratings, maybe it should consider filming a reality show set behind the scenes of its back-to-back prime-time news shows “Paula Zahn Now” and “Anderson Cooper 360” – in which the shows’ two newly appointed producers, Victor Neufeld and David Doss, take their long-simmering rivalry public and give us a show to rival “Broadcast News” in its dramatic punch. Interestingly, CNN chief Jonathan Klein has appointed two men who worked long enough together at ABC News to develop – according to colleagues – a long-standing and deep-seated animosity toward each other. Mr. Doss was forced out of ABC last year after failing to deliver ratings success as executive producer at “Primetime Live”; Mr. Neufeld left his post as executive producer of “20/20” for the unenviable task of breathing life into “CBS This Morning,” the diva-less CBS morning show that only Leslie Moonves could love. Now Mr. Klein has put these two archrivals in charge of bolstering the lagging ratings of its prime-time offerings. How long before he realizes what a great hour-long drama he has created, and sells the Neufeld-Doss debacle to HBO as a series? As they like to say in the television news business, only time will tell.