BY DAVID KRONKE >TV CRITIC

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Clearly, The CW was hoping that "Crowned: The Mother of All Pageants" would boast a lot of the bitchiness and shallow whininess and viewer Schadenfreude that serve as the calling card of its biggest hit, "America's Next Top Model."

Well, it's shallow, all right, but shallow in and of itself is hardly a huge selling point. The contestants are almost uniformly insipid, and when they're asked to cook up little presentations to wow the judges (who also aren't terribly interesting), the result is less an hour of prime-time broadcast entertainment and more a cringe-inducing amateur talent show.

Unpromisingly, "Crowned" opens with the usual reality-competition yada yada yada - the contestants ooh and ahh over their digs, a "magnificent pageant palace"; they all say something like, "I definitely think we're the team to beat"; they cattily disparage the other teams (but not cleverly or nearly enough to make this a guilty pleasure); and react slackly to the judges' every utterance.

Tonight's competition has each team giving itself a moniker.

The drably unimaginative names ("Blonde Bombshells," "Diamond Dolls," "Sassy Sisters") give you an idea of the level of cleverness at work here. If any of these women have much personality, the editors made certain to assiduously avoid showing it.

The funniest thing "Crowned" has going for it - and it's not all that funny - is the "de-sashing" ritual, as the losing team takes an oversize scissors with a handled encrusted with cubic zirconia and clip their sashes from their bodices.

The screener sent by The CW omitted the de-sashing in tonight's episode, and the fact that I didn't care who got axed underscores just how blah this uninspired program really is.

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

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>review

CROWNED: THE MOTHER OF ALL PAGEANTS

What: Mother-daughter teams compete in this reality series.
Where: The CW Channel 5
When: 9 tonight; thereafter, 8 p.m. Wednesda ys.
In a nutshell: You’ll come for the Schadenfreude; you’ll leave because of all the insipidity.

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