fox just can't resist playing with its sunday night lineup.

Malcolm in the Middleairs Sunday nights at 8:30 p.m. ET on FOX.

A couple of years back, Fox had what seemed to be the perfect Sunday night lineup. An hour of hilarious animation ("The Simpsons" and "King of the Hill") followed by the more serious but intriguing "The X-Files." Then, as all networks do, Fox decided to tinker with its night of high ratings in the hopes of spreading those ratings around. They moved "King of the Hill" and replaced it with the occasionally amusing (but still much less satisfying) "That 70's Show." Predictably, ratings for "Hill" dropped like a brick (especially since they pitted it against "Buffy the Vampire Slayer") and many of us who were faithful viewers of the Sunday night Fox lineup regarded "That 70's Show" as little more than an extended snack break.

Since then, several shows have come and gone from the Sunday night 8:30 slot, the most promising being "Futurama," a natural complement to Matt Groening's other brain-child, "The Simpsons." With "King of the Hill" tacked on at 7:30, it seemed that Fox's golden Sunday night had returned. But then Fox hit us again with a change to the lineup - "Futurama" was replaced with a live-action series called "Malcolm in the Middle."

I was prepared to hate "Malcolm," simply because it is a Fox live-action comedy. The only other show of this sort I've liked from this network was "Ally McBeal," and even that has flushed itself down the toilet in a neurotic whirlpool of ever-increasing speed -- but more about that in another column. "That 70's Show" has the ability to make me laugh at its sheer stupidity, but the humor is more sophomoric than of the scathing genius found in "The Simpsons" or "Futurama." How could "Malcolm" hope to climb above its flesh-and-blood peers?

Hope first crept in when I heard the strains of They Might Be Giants singing the theme song. Anybody cool enough to commission a TV theme song from TMBG (and even feature another TMBG song later in the show) can't be all bad. Then the show began.

"Malcolm" presents us with a family of two parents and four boys, the oldest (and Malcolm's favorite) of whom has been shipped off to a military school after a series of disciplinary mishaps. The direction really shines here as said mishaps are presented rapid-fire style, each line of dialogue connecting to the next scene of disaster in the eldest brother's standard excuse speech. Francis' departure leaves our hero Malcolm as the middle child, trapped between his twitty younger brother Dewey and the moose-headed pre-teen, Reese. The parents are the strangest characters of the lot: Mom is the center of the family whirlwind, barking orders and sorting laundry. If we were to follow that metaphor, Dad would be a tropical depression off the coast of Africa. When the time comes for him to make a key family decision, he quickly changes the subject to the relative fullness of the ice tea pitcher.

Some comparisons have been made between "Malcolm in the Middle" and "Parker Lewis Can't Lose," and they do share that sort of hyper-awareness of public school society and its varying castes. But Malcolm is too young to have the confidence that Parker effused; think of him as a proto-Parker, more often stuck in that mode of mouth-agape disbelief at life's latest bit of unfairness. Similarly, the show's humor is less developed than that of "Parker Lewis," too frequently softened by sentiment or the need to resolve a plot line within its restrictive thirty minute format. The bully at Malcolm's school is overcome within the first episode, a character from whom "Parker" would have milked comedy for half a season at least.

"Malcolm" differs from "Parker" also in that its humor is based on standards ten years more modern; one need only look at the tales of the family Simpson today compared to those of 1990 to see just how different those standards are. Some of the jokes in this more modern comedy are more subtle than "Parker" usually managed. For instance, the houses on either side of Malcolm's obnoxious family's home are for sale. Thankfully, no comment on this is made by the characters; it is a quiet joke that the observant may enjoy. In other instances, the new show is more blunt and risqué than "Parker's" creators could have afforded to be -- as when Malcolm's mom answers the door topless. Unintimidated by the fact that Malcolm's guidance counselor has arrived at her home for a chat, Mom merely offers, "They're just boobs, lady, you see 'em every morning when you look in the mirror."

The aspects of Malcolm's life that spoke to me most clearly were those in which Malcolm quit speaking to the camera and became a real boy. As the oldest of five kids (all boys except for the youngest), the scene in which Malcolm and his brothers, clad in their Saturday-morning underwear, go rolling past Malcolm's guidance counselor in a wailing knot of tangled limbs made me feel right at home. Take from that what you will.

All of this rambling is based on the first episode, and let's face it, first episodes are rarely indicative of a show's long-term quality. Hopefully, later stories won't have to be painted in such broad strokes and can focus on packing in more jokes -- and please, let them be of the clever variety, not of the "shaving dad's back" variety.