Anyone who has attended one of Ron Megee's cross-dressing adaptations of "The Stepford Wives" or "Bonanza" will instantly recognize the appeal of NBC's latest piece of low-budget summer filler, "The Rerun Show." Airing at 8:30 Thursday on Channel 41, the program features a comedy troupe re-enacting actual scripts of not-so-classic sitcoms from the '70s and '80s. While theater companies around the country have been staging similar productions for years, this is the first instance of a television network plundering its own script archive. Sorry to say, the novelty wears off in a hurry on "The Rerun Show." To be precise, it vanishes between the clever opening sketch, adapted from a 1980 episode of "The Facts of Life," and its lifeless follow-up, in which a good-natured "Diff'rent Strokes" from 1979 is turned into an uninspired raunchfest. Each of these 10-minute mini-shows (pared down from the original 22-minute scripts) is loaded with visual gags, none funnier than Paul Vogt strutting across the screen as Mrs. Garrett, the spacy housekeeper made famous by Charlotte Rae. Vogt is one of several "Rerun Show" players in drag. Sadly, once "The Facts of Life" is over, "The Rerun Show" itself starts to drag. In the "Diff'rent Strokes" sendup, Mr. Drummond becomes a leering foster parent to two black children, the older one an oversexed teen-ager. Next week, if we can judge from the previews, we will be treated to an extremely long Sherman Helmsley impersonation during a "Jeffersons" spoof. If you're looking for the inspired lunacy of Megee or the "Real Live Brady Bunch," you won't find it here. Rather, I was reminded of countless mediocre satires of TV shows I'd watched over the years on "SNL" or "MAD TV." And that's the fatal irony of "The Rerun Show": We've seen it all before. "Sweet Old Song," this week's feature on the PBS documentary series "P.O.V." (see "Recommended Shows" for air times), revisits the life of fiddler Howard Armstrong, subject of a 1988 "P.O.V." film and the last surviving link to the all-black string bands that flourished before World War II. In this heartwarming update, filmmaker Leah Mahan looks at Armstrong, now in his 90s, through the eyes of the woman he has shared the last 20 years of his life with. Artist Barbara Ward is three decades his junior. Armstrong continues to tour and perform before appreciative crowds, as well as paint, and Mahan explores how Ward's efforts and sacrifice made it possible for a living legend to keep on living the legend to a wonderfully ripe old age. Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon finally return to ESPN's daily talk show, "Pardon the Interruption," this afternoon (4:30 p.m. weekdays). Wilbon's been on a month's vacation while Kornheiser was serving a suspension, reportedly for talking on the air about a beloved producer's recent firing. If nothing else, Tony and Mike's extended time out has settled one bet about "PTI": Is it the format or the hosts? No doubt about it, Kornheiser and Wilbon would be entertaining in many formats. But in less capable hands (and yes, the shrill Max Kellerman does leap to mind), all the omnipresent "PTI" countdown clock does is remind us how many seconds are left before the fill-ins stop murdering the current topic and move on to murdering the next topic. Surely one bit of upcoming "PTI" fodder will be "Slamball," the newest pseudo-sport to come to TV. A modified game of basketball played on trampolines - and dreamed up by two TV producers - it debuts at 7 p.m. Saturday on TNN. I mention "Slamball" only because it has so deftly and deliberately avoided making the strategic blunder of the ill-fated XFL, which tried to appeal to football purists. Slamball isn't tailored to basketball fans but to video game freaks. It has short contests (a doubleheader is played every hour), continuous play (the ball bounces off a plexiglass wall instead of going out of bounds) and lots of loopy action. Trampolines are an inspired equalizer that allow players like the 5-foot-10 Sean "Inches" Jackson to spend much of the first game dunking over the heads of his much taller defenders. Alas, the second game showed how boring Slamball can get when people stop scoring - or worse, start taking traditional 3-point shots without the trampoline. And miss. You can reach Aaron Barnhart through the TV Barn Web site at www.tvbarn.com. RECOMMENDED SHOWS TODAY: "Pardon the Interruption," 4:30 p.m. weekdays on ESPN. Reviewed in today's column. TUESDAY: "A City on Fire" (9 p.m., HBO and HBO Latino). This clear-eyed documentary recalls the uneasy relationship between the 1968 Detroit Tigers and a riot-torn city. SUNDAY: "P.O.V.," 10 p.m., KCPT (9 p.m. Tuesday on Topeka's KTWU). Reviewed in today's column.

