Shallow pals Sexy cable shows often come up short

Television's two most sexually forward series return tonight with fresh episodes. "Sex and the City," last year's Emmy Award winner for Best Comedy, airs the first of six new episodes at 8 p.m. on HBO, followed by "Queer as Folk," a drama about gay life in Pittsburgh that begins its second season at 9 p.m. on Showtime. Though I've never much liked either one, if you're unfamiliar with these shows - and you don't mind the sight of bared flesh, some bump-and-grind and the promiscuous use of bad language - it's worth your while to sample one of them tonight. Both have a long list of accolades from TV critics and a devoted fandom. Both shows also break new ground in television with their willingness, even eagerness, to explore adult themes once considered off-limits even to premium cable channels. This novelty, I suspect, is a large part of their appeal. But move beyond the dirty talk and the erotic gymnastics and what do you have? Not much more than some very superficial single people in an endless pursuit of pleasure without commitment. Yet their desire to speak so frankly the language of intercourse suggests a heightened sense of responsibility, so when it turns out the opposite is true, it feels like a cheat. "Sex and the City," which made its premiere on HBO in 1998, is supposedly based on the column by the same name that Candace Bushnell wrote for the New York Observer in the mid-1990s. Despite the provocative title, Bushnell was actually compiling a detailed sociological study of Manhattan's upper crust. Her dishy and absorbing accounts teemed with information about social climbing and the various ways in which sex affected status in the elite's surprisingly fluid pecking order. In a way Bushnell's columns, later compiled into a book titled Sex and the City, formed the companion work, in a different voice, to Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities a decade earlier. HBO optioned Bushnell's book, and producer Darren Star, who created "Beverly Hills 90210" and "Melrose Place," punched it into a comedy about four luckless babes - Carrie, the narrator and lead character based on Bushnell, and her three high-powered friends - for whom bedding a man is laughably simple, yet male companionship is ridiculously hard to find. A typical episode of "Sex and the City" presents each woman with some sort of man problem, anything from an unusual carnal practice he insists on engaging in to the size of his endowment. The women then share these concerns in copious and explicit detail the next time they have lunch together, which seems to be every day. They spend hours sitting in restaurants regaling each other with commentary about their sex lives and men in general. Many female fans consider these table scenes the highlight of the show. Of course men get a little something, too - namely Kim Cattrall, the big-shouldered gal who plays the insatiable Samantha. While her compadres keep their clothes on, hardly an episode goes by when Cattrall isn't kicking hers off. This, along with her character's sexual voraciousness, has helped the 40-something Cattrall upstage Sarah Jessica Parker, the show's ostensible star. Samantha has the three best lines in tonight's episode, all of them variations on how quickly she can get a man out of her apartment after having sex with him. Though Samantha is the most aggressive of the bunch, all four women use their "Seinfeld"-esque badinage to convey a fascination with the mechanics of mating usually attributed to males. Just like the National Geographic Channel, the thrill here is in the hunt. Yet no one is prepared for the catch. And that is the unacknowledged sadness running through "Sex and the City." Even though the show's writers like to wrap up each episode with a tidy piety from Carrie about love and romance, it's obvious she doesn't have a clue. Her long-running affair with an industry mogul nicknamed "Mr. Big" (played by "Law & Order's" Chris Noth) was a classic in non-reflectiveness. In tonight's episode, when Carrie gets into a fight with her boyfriend, the tiff is never resolved - it's simply pushed aside in the name of romantic bliss. That's OK for a farce like "Frasier," where chronic haplessness with the ladies is part of the fun. But "Sex and the City" invests so heavily in physical intimacy that the emotional void can't be trivialized. Without a recognition of the stakes involved, everyone here seems miserably shallow. 'Queer as Folk' "Queer as Folk," which takes place in and around Pittsburgh's gay community, suffers from the same obsession with the flesh as "Sex and the City." As a drama, however, it at least attempts to talk through the emotional fog that blankets its main characters. The problem is that when people on "Queer as Folk" open their mouths to say something heartfelt, as often as not something insipid comes out. It's too bad Showtime didn't simply acquire the original "Queer as Folk," produced by Britain's Channel Four, and air it instead. I haven't seen it, but I'm told it's much better written, which isn't hard to believe. (Steamier, too.) I'm going to give away two scenes from tonight's second-season premiere, though only viewers who were stunned by the resolution of "Harper Valley P.T.A." will fail to see these whoppers coming from a mile off. In one scene, a lesbian character attends the wedding of her sister. It is the sister's third wedding in five years, yet she has the nerve to ask her gay sister and her partner to bring male dates, so as not to call attention to themselves. Oh and, incidentally, the gay sister has been called upon to give a toast at the wedding reception. She wouldn't try to wreck it with a little self-righteous posturing, would she? Another scene involving a gay-hating judge rates nearly as high a cringe factor. The good news is that a much better adult drama that deals in part with gay life returns in just two months: HBO's "Six Feet Under." Other cable premieres In addition to "Queer as Folk," two other Showtime series return this week. "The Chris Isaak Show," in which the rock singer pretends to have an offbeat life off-stage, begins its second season at 9:45 tonight, following "Queer as Folk." The black-oriented romance series "Soul Food" returns at 9 p.m. Wednesday with new episodes. HBO's "Oz" returns for its fifth season at 9 tonight. If this presents you with an impossible choice, just remember "Queer as Folk" repeats at 9 p.m. Tuesdays and "Oz" an hour later. Also this week, "The It Factor," a nonfiction series about struggling actors, premieres at 8 tonight on Bravo. The cameras follow 12 actors around New York as they try out for movie roles, bit parts on TV shows and soda commercials. To reach Aaron Barnhart, phone (816) 234-4790 or visit the TV Barn Web site at www.tvbarn.com. @ART CAPTION:"Sex and the City," starring (clockwise from top left) Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon, begins the first of six new episodes on HBO tonight. @ART CREDIT:CRAIG BLANKENHORN @ART CAPTION:"Queer as Folk," starring (from left) Peter Paige as Emmett, Hal Sparks as Michael and Scott Lowell as Ted, returns for a second season tonight on Showtime. @ART CREDIT:L. PIEF WEYMAN/Showtime @ART:Photos (5, color)