BY DAVID KRONKE >TV CRITIC

Clueless idiocy can be the stuff of inspired comedy - it's been done from the kids' show "SpongeBob SquarePants" to the not-for-kids show "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia."

The trick is to make characters who are something less than human somehow likable, somehow relatable, or at least convey to viewers that there's a reason you're devoting such energy to telling these clowns' stories. NBC's new sitcom "Kath & Kim," based on a hit Australian sitcom, doesn't manage this. So unless you subscribe to particularly rarefied tastes, you'll likely wonder how this got on the air in the first place.

It's not the fault of the stars. Molly Shannon gives her all as Kath, who has survived years of catering to her utterly spoiled daughter Kim (Selma Blair) and has found happiness with a mall fast-food restaurant owner named Phil Knight (John Michael Higgins).

Kim, on the other hand, is a handful and then some. She returns home pouting, because her husband suggested she pop a couple of frozen dinners in the microwave. "I didn't sign up for cooking dinner or being interested in how someone's day was - I'm a trophy wife," she fumes.

It'd take a particularly deft performer to make a character that monumentally self-absorbed remotely appealing, and Blair's not up to the task.

Complicating the situation is the fact that both Kath and Kim have epochally tacky taste in, well, everything. One would have to be really tone-deaf to the outside world to think that their fashion choices are remotely viable. But they make for a cheap laugh or two, I suppose.

If viewers wouldn't want to spend time with people like this in their real lives, why would they want to watch them on TV? The condescension here is palpable - maybe only Tina Fey's interpretation of Sarah Palin could relate to this stuff.

Even the camera work is off - there's occasional jittery, hand-held business that makes the show look like a documentary, even though it clearly isn't. Despite some genuinely clever one-liners, viewers will likely be too turned off to appreciate them.

David Kronke, (818) 713-3638 david.kronke@dailynews.com

www.insidesocal.com/tv/

review>

KATH & KIM

>What: Like mother, like daughter: Clueless and spectacularly tacky.

>Where: NBC (Channel 4).

>When: 8:30 pm Thursday

>In a nutshell: A smattering of funny lines, but the tone's so off that you may not notice.