BY DAVID KRONKE >TV CRITIC

"Oprah's Big Give," a reality competition series in which contestants raise funds for deserving individuals, features surprisingly little of Oprah Winfrey outside of the title.

Sure, at the beginning she phones up those selected to be contestants to inform them of their participation, allowing them to shriek joyously for cameras that conveniently and suspiciously just happened to be on hand, and she greets them as they first gather. But at that point, her work is done, and the show is handed over to what she deems three experts in altruism, without explaining why: "Naked Chef" Jamie Oliver, Chris Rock's wife, Malaak, and football player Tony Gonzalez.

But then, a lot gets lost in the shuffle in "Big Give." Tonight, five teams of two - contestants range from an Iraq veteran to a beauty queen - mount fundraisers for a recently widowed mother, a homeless mother of two and a woman who assists those with Down's syndrome, among others.

Except that we don't really see what they do to raise the money.

Sure, we follow one team as they flounder about lost for hours, and we see some team members get tetchy.

But because of frenetic editing that can border on incoherent, all viewers see are the teams planting the seeds of their ideas on how to help their charges, then the outcomes. We're not shown how they went about organizing their events or approaching people to help out, probably because there's little drama in trying to raise money when one is surrounded by TV cameras and name-dropping Oprah: People happily open their wallets at that point.

Essentially, in tonight's installment, they're trying to cram five "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" episodes into a single hour. The emotional impact, despite the moving nature of some of the stories, is diluted through the choppy editing. Typical reality-show lines are just slapped together, side by side:

"There's a lot of pressure here!"

"But we just can't simply go out without a plan!"

"How realistic is it that they're going to be able to pull this whole thing off?"

It's laudable that the show wants to help people, but as presented here, the result is good civic activism rather than good television.

review>

OPRAH'S BIG GIVE

>What: Reality-competition show featuring teams raising money for deserving individuals.

>Where: ABC (Channel 7).

>When: 9 p.m. Sunday.

>In a nutshell: Frenetic editing crams too much into an episode, diluting its impact.

Also this weekend

"Torchwood": The gang investigates a series of murders in which the victims have had their blood systems "erased." This leads them to Pharm, a cutting-edge biotechnology firm dabbling in curing incurable diseases with lethal alien parasites. Miss Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman) of "Doctor Who" helps the team out on this one. As usual, a single episode of "Torchwood" boasts enough crazy inventiveness to fuel a season of most shows.

"Dirt": Season 2 begins after a kind of rocky Season 1 got bogged down in an overly serious, apocalyptic tone that didn't really hew to what the show's about. (Courteney Cox's Lucy Spiller, the editor of the gossip rag Dirt Now, was the FX antihero who had the least fun, even though her life was by far the easiest.)

They've changed the show quite a bit, lightening the tone (though it could stand to have a few more really funny lines) and reimagining it as "Law & Order" meets TMZ.com. If this had been what the show was all along, it probably would've fared better last year.

"Breaking Bad": Walt (Bryan Cranston) goes all bad-ass on us, even with his incapacitating cancer. Though he instructs his meth-slinging colleague Jesse (Aaron Paul) to use "no violence" in his business dealings, he pretty spectacularly breaks his own rule by episode's end. Fulminate of mercury gets some pretty righteous product placement; everyone with a score to settle is going to want some.

"Aliens in America": We've previously discussed the likely fate of The CW, and this modest sitcom is likely going to be residual damage. The show, about a Muslim foreign exchange student in a small Wisconsin town, returns Sunday with new episodes. Oddly, the main characters cede center stage to Dylan Taylor, whose recurring character, Trey, gets the episode's best laughs. Taylor transforms him in this story into the most empathetic bully ever.

> "Torchwood": 6 and 9 p.m. Saturday, BBC America.

> "Dirt": 10 p.m. Sunday, FX.

> "Breaking Bad": 10 p.m. Sunday, AMC.

> "Aliens in America": 8:30 p.m. Sunday, The CW Channel 5.

David Kronke, (818) 713-3638
david.kronke@dailynews.com
www.insidesocal.com/tv/

review>

1/2

OPRAH'S BIG GIVE

>What: Reality-competition show featuring teams raising money for deserving individuals.

\>Where: ABC (Channel 7).

\>When: 9 p.m. Sunday.

\>In a nutshell: Frenetic editing crams too much into an episode, diluting its impact.