Taking A Bite Of 'ER' CBS' Dark 'BIG APPLE' wants a piece of the Thursday-night action

A stripper is murdered, and none too neatly, in a Park Avenue apartment.

Call in the N.Y.P.D. This is a David Milch show, after all, and Milch was the street-wise creative force behind "NYPD Blue."

But "NYPD Blue" is clear broth compared with "Big Apple."

Milch's latest is thick, dark and wormy. The stripper's death leads two New York police detectives, Mike Mooney (Ed O'Neill) and his young partner, Vincent Trout (Jeffrey Pierce), to an FBI operation against the Russian mafia, and to a shaky alliance with the federal investigators.

Viewers might feel they're being escorted into a closed-end maze. Until "Big Apple" finally yields an explanatory scene or two, it's a challenge, and then some, to sort out the roster of characters.

This isn't a typical case of throwing a midseason show on the air, after the February sweeps, and hoping that it sprouts angel wings.

If "Survivor II" is the foundation of CBS' giddy new stronghold on Thursday nights, and "C.S.I." the keystone that locks the other pieces in place, "Big Apple" is supposed to be the last big stone in the edifice.

It sits opposite "ER." As soon as CBS slotted "Big Apple" against an "ER" rerun tonight, NBC magically discovered a brand-new "ER" episode to dampen the "Big Apple" debut. Not only that, but an episode with a missing baby at County General Hospital. It's just not fair.

NBC also canceled an "ER" repeat for next Thursday and replaced it with yet another new "ER." Then NBC had another idea. Scratch the new episode; next week it'll dust off the most celebrated "ER" installment, "Love's Labor Lost," first broadcast in 1995, and put that on to face the second "Big Apple."

Punch and counterpunch. Or maybe cider and countercider.

"It's nice to see the incumbent reacting against the new kid on the block," says Les Moonves, the president of CBS.

But he knows NBC will run out of fresh "ERs" before CBS pulls every "Apple" out of its Why all the bother? For a TV executive, Moonves is stunningly candid on that point: "There is more money on Thursday than on any other night.

We wanted some of that money. . . . Our sales guys are licking their chops over getting some of this money."

Tonight "Big Apple" is virtually certain to lose. Its dilemma is that it's not the type of show that lends itself easily to viewer catchup in a week or two. Tonight's premiere isn't self-contained. It sets up a story arc.@sk,0

The two detectives -- it's great to see O'Neill out of his "Married . . . With Children" women's shoes and into a gumshoe -- are deputized by the FBI, which fears an N.Y.P.D. murder investigation at the Russian-controlled strip club will compromise its undercover efforts.

The point man in the FBI operation is agent Jimmy Flynn (Titus Welliver of "Brooklyn South" and "Falcone"). He reports to agent Will Preecher (David Strathairn), who seems the closest thing here to a sympathetic cop.

Then there's Michael Madsen, of ear-slicing fame in "Reservoir Dogs." He's Terry Maddock, a bar owner and secret FBI informant who seems to be having trouble kicking his old homicidal habits.

The only woman of note in the cast, murder victim excepted, is Kim Dickens ("The Gift," "Hollow Man") as Sarah Day, an FBI agent brought to the New York office to sniff for internal corruption.

There's nothing to dislike about the cast, and under the direction of Charles Haid, tonight's pilot is a darkly handsome, and sometimes grisly, hunk of police intrigue.

Milch wrote the script with co-executive producer Anthony Yerkovich, of "Miami Vice." Milch's touch is unmistakable -- the soupy, sordid milieu, the cop jargon, the profanity, the insinuating and confrontational dialogue, the cynicism, the absence of levity.

Milch has created a world here, of exceptionally bad bad guys, flawed good guys, superficially slick federal agents and, in O'Neill's character, a blunt workaday cop who wants to tell the world to "kiss my underpaid Irish ass."

But is it a world viewers will want to inhabit week after week, with "ER" crooking its inviting finger? That's a very tough sell.