Check out the new fall imports: "Kath/Kim," "Eleventh Hour," "Life on Mars" debut Thursday

  

American TV shows have been borrowing ideas from other countries for more than a generation. From "Sanford and Son" and "All in the Family" to "Big Brother" and "The Office," some of our biggest hits were tested in offshore laboratories before coming here. (Then there were the American versions of "Coupling," "Fawlty Towers" and "Viva Blackpool"; the less said about those, the better.)

As it happens, three such adaptations are all debuting Thursday night on competing networks.

"Life on Mars" (9 p.m. CT, ABC) will be familiar to anyone who remembers my picking the British sci-fi thriller as one of the top shows of 2006 when it aired on BBC America. The concept hasn't changed -- though the action has shifted from England to New York City, and Harvey Keitel is now involved -- and while I prefer the British "Mars," the show's premise is so strong that this decent execution of it is hard not to recommend.

The premise? While solving a ring of serial murders that's deeply personal to him, detective Sam Tyler is struck by a car and knocked straight back into 1973. In this parallel world he still has his badge, but no computer, no DNA ... and no clue what he's doing here or how he gets back to the present.

Sam is played by Jason O'Mara, who can't hold a candle to the original Sam, played by John Simm. O'Mara overacts his way through the first hour, including the inevitable moment when he yells, to a precinct room full of cops in 1973 clothes and fashions, "I don't know who the hell you are, but ..." (At first I didn't even recognize Michael Imperioli from "The Sopranos," who looks like Al Pacino's Serpico in a leisure suit.)

For that matter, Keitel doesn't bring much interest to his role as Sam's aggressive precinct commander. As often happens with adaptations, the producers (or network) insisted on recreating the British pilot almost scene by scene, and it's the "almost" that gets this show in trouble. When Keitel beats the stuffing out of O'Mara early on, it's an edited version of the original scene, with little explanation for why this is happening.

At the heart of "Life on Mars," besides the question of how Sam got here, is the weekly playing-out of the rivalry between the commander, with his old fashioned people "skills," and Sam with the advantage of 35 years of CSI hindsight. I'm afraid that editing key moments in the original has diluted much of that tension, but the season is hopefully still young.

"Kath & Kim" (7:30 p.m. CT, NBC) was a huge hit in Australia. Imagine the "Gilmore Girls" gone horribly awry and you get the idea. Kath (here played by Molly Shannon) is a single mom to her spoiled brat Kim (Selma Blair) in a world dominated by shopping malls, TV and celebrity tabloids. Kim has just moved back in with her mom after marching out on her hapless husband of six weeks, Craig (Mikey Day), whose crime seems to have been suggesting that eating out three meals a day might not be a good long-term strategy.

I really wanted to hate this show, with its two self-absorbed, unreal characters and its shopworn satire of suburbia. But midway through the second episode, I couldn't help but laugh at the two leads' exuberant embrace of their goofy, pop-culture-stuffed personas. The dialogue is surprisingly fresh, even to someone who's watched way too many MTV reality shows. In its comedic treatment of everyday American foibles, "Kath & Kim" is well matched with "My Name Is Earl."

"Eleventh Hour" (9 p.m. CT, CBS) is an OK adaptation of a British mystery that starred Patrick Stewart as Jacob Hood, a brilliant scientist sent in to investigate creepy phenomena. But this isn't "Fringe," the Fox thriller that announced itself with a gory outbreak of some sort of plague on steroids. There's very little "X-Files" in "Eleventh Hour," which looks and feels like other CBS crime shows -- not surprising, since Jerry Bruckheimer, the director-producer behind all the "CSIs," adapted this. Episodes are procedural and self-contained, and if there is some sinister force behind the weird medical terrors that inhabit this show, it's not obvious.

The show is entertaining enough, but the American Hood, played by Rufus Sewell, won't remind anyone of Patrick Stewart.