Remote patrol

Even if I hadn't known that it was coming from the production shop of Tom Fontana and Barry Levinson, whose previous hits include "Homicide" and "Oz," I still would have found "The Beat" a big disappointment. The new UPN cop show (8 tonight on Channel 29) tells the story of two young, impossibly good-looking members of New York's finest (Derek Cecil and Mark Ruffalo) whose personal lives may be in as much disarray as the mopes they haul in. It looked promising in the promos, but almost from the get-go it's one downer after the next. Certainly it raises, or rather lowers, the bar for the number of times the cops say words you couldn't say even in late night five years ago. Worse, every one of the four leads - the screwed-up cops and their mismatched girlfriends - has something to hate about them. @ART CAPTION:Ruffalo @ART:Photo (color) >>>