BY DAVID KRONKE >TV CRITIC

"Crash's" surprise Oscar win as 2004's best picture has since been declared one of the Academy Awards' most boneheaded moves, that year's default prize for calling for tolerance because the academy wasn't yet quite tolerant enough of homosexuality to honor "Brokeback Mountain."

The film ostensibly eviscerated racism and sought to call all of our own private prejudices and motivations into question. But virtually every confrontation was so over-the-top – characters escalated to DEFCON 1 faster than most of us would realize we needed to respond with a defensive posture. It could've easily been called "L.A.: City Without Tact."

The premium cable channel Starz's new series based on the film, also called "Crash," would be more appropriately titled "L.A.: City of Coprolalia." (It's always lame to explain a joke, but coprolalia is the involuntary urge to curse, insult others or otherwise behave socially inappropriately.)

Like the film, the show follows a disparate group of Angelenos united only by their itchy trigger fingers. As tonight's installment opens, a loony record producer (Dennis Hopper) exposes himself to his female limo driver; later in the episode, he'll threaten someone with a bowie knife.

Later, a cop (Ross McCall) is involved in a collision with a young woman (Moran Atias) while his siren is blaring. She immediately gets all up in his face, he responds with tasteless sexual innuendo, and they improbably continue a contentiously flirtatious relationship long after the incident.

A paramedic (Brian Tee) gets involved against his will with gang bangers. A Brentwood housewife (Clare Carey) whose grumpy father (Michael Fairman) constantly berates her embittered husband (D.B. Sweeney) is teetering on the edge of sanity. And so on.

With its lurid, cynical take on how human beings interact with one another, "Crash" isn't just about car accidents. It's a train wreck.

Retooling classic 'Crusoe'

"How strange a world of providence is the life of man," Robinson Crusoe (Philip Winchester) portentously muses in the opening seconds of Friday's premiere of "Crusoe," a very loose adaptation of the Daniel Defoe classic.

That line does two things: It throws you off the scent of the fairly foolish romp that is to follow, and it's the closest the show will come to faithfulness to Defoe. (Crusoe's actual rumination was "How strange a checker-work of providence is the life of man").

Crusoe, of course, is stranded on a remote island alone, with his friend - not servant - Friday (Tongayi Chirisa). He's jiggered the island with all sorts of hoists and pulleys and conveyance devices and elevators and water filters and security systems and incendiary devices with which to communicate with passing ships. By comparison, "Gilligan's Island's" Professor's tinkerings are the work of a third-grade dropout.

In tonight's episode, Ye Olde Pirates with not much more personality than those on Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean ride arrive on the island in search of a rumored treasure. Accompanying them is a comely wench (Georgina Ryalance) who's the equal of any man and given to flaring her eyes in Crusoe's direction. ("I wouldn't want to be the man who tries to tame her," one pirate mutters.) The show practices a familiar form of politically correct affirmative action - Friday is hardly a savage, speaking several languages and possessing a keen sense of irony; the woman bests Crusoe in a sword fight.

Meanwhile, flashbacks to Crusoe's happy life back in England with his wife Susannah (Anna Walton) his mentor, the ominously named Blackthorn (Sam Neill), pad out the story.

Crusoe's sole goal is to return to Susannah's loving embrace, but given that he has been gone long enough to enact a gadget-laden extreme island makeover, why would he think she hasn't given him up for dead?

"Crusoe" is inoffensive and intermittently engaging, droll without actually being funny, generically action-packed when not lead-footed and, in general, safe if uncompelling viewing for family audiences.

Were Defoe to see this retooling of his work, he'd no doubt say, "How strange a world of providence is the life of man."

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

www.insidesocal.com/tv/

reviews>

CRASH

>What: The 2004 Oscar winner in handy TV form.

>Where: Starz.

>When: 10 Friday.

>In a nutshell: If anything, even more overheated than the movie.

CRUSOE

>What: Daniel Defoe's high-school-lit standard receives its requisite TV makeover.

>Where: NBC (Channel 4).

>When: 8 p.m. Friday; thereafter, 9 p.m. Fridays.

>In a nutshell: Family audiences could do worse on a Friday night.