In France it's Alerte a Malibu. Venezuelans call it Guardianes de la Bahia. The Hebrew title is Mishmar Ha-mifratz. Many people jokingly refer to it as Babewatch. They may be right, since what's in a name is less important than who's in the bathing suit. It is the most watched television series on the planet, beamed to every continent except Antarctica. The surf-and-sand idyll that an American TV network canceled after one season is currently sold to 103 countries and reaches 2.3 billion viewers outside the U.S. (and is again available to Americans through the wonders of syndication). It offers watchers the momentary pleasure of escape into a mirage of glorious beaches, bronzed gods and goddesses in small crimson swimsuits and heroic beach guardians who pull off at least one daring rescue in every episode. Ah, if only life were really like Baywatch.

It isn't, and everyone knows it, yet the program conjures up an irresistible vision of 1990s America. Says David Hasselhoff, 43, the show's male star and one of its executive producers: "If people are in a place with turmoil or have trouble on a personal level, they can turn on Baywatch, and it's a world they can dream about like a boy dreams about a first kiss, or a girl about her first boyfriend.'' Every Thursday night, 1.5 million Italians enter Baywatch's universe, settling in for an hour beneath the California sky. Says Luca Masoero, 33, a writer for the teen weekly Beautiful Magazine: "It's got a little bit of everything: intrigue, love, adventure and passion. And the Malibu beach and the sun are important to the success. Here in Milan, the weather is so sad.''

Lifting that gloom for the under-18 female crowd in Italy is the prospect of episodes due next month and a first look at Jaason Simmons, an actor new to the series this year. Italian teen boys, like older men around the world, remain steadfast in their weak-kneed devotion to the abbondanza of Pamela Anderson. Thanks to Baywatch, the Canadian-born actress-known as Pamela Lee since marrying musician Tommy Lee earlier this year-is a pinup princess and a much emulated woman. Britain's Prince William reportedly went off to Eton's hallowed halls this month with a Pam poster. After a month-long contest featuring 2,680 curvaceous women with sun-bleached manes, Nadine Mohrmann, 18, was named winner of Germany's national Pamela look-alike contest on Sept. 5. Proclaimed the Berlin secretary proudly: "My Dad always compared me to Pam.''

Baywatch bares plenty of skin, but the show's sex appeal is only in its look, not its action. Lebanese government censors, who snip away nudity and explicitly sexual scenes from TV footage to forestall complaints by Muslim fundamentalists, have no need to prune Baywatch. "It is healthy and clean,'' observes TV critic Alain Plisson of the newspaper L'Orient-Le Jour. "There's no hanky-panky. You can let your kids watch it.'' Argentina's former ambassador to Ireland, Santos Goni Demarchi, 82, never missed an episode last season. Often he viewed the show with his grandchildren since, as he says, "there's no violence, no sex. It's about saving lives on the beach and about love and families.''

This was not the stuff of Dynasty or Dallas, the '80s celebrations of the wealthy, the powerful and the overdressed that once exemplified America. Hasselhoff--whose international popularity from the mid-'80s Knight Rider series and a pop-music career was a help in rescuing Baywatch after NBC dropped it--calls it a family show with serious issues. "While some people watch for the babes,'' he points out, "we've done programs about the homeless, mentally handicapped children, cancer.'' Hong Kong's Star TV introduced the series to India two years ago. Though conservative politicians regularly warn about its corrupting influence, it is one of the top five English-language series. For Amita Malik, the nation's most prominent television critic, the program symbolizes "the sheer health of American youth.'' The characters "are the gorgeous products of a hardworking and affluent society.''

As it reaches more countries and is dubbed into more languages, Baywatch filters into people's everyday lives. While the Scandinavian summer has faded, the red swimsuits made by the company that supplies the Baywatch stars are selling briskly, particularly the Pamela Lee high-cut model. Scooters and jeeps like the vehicles used by Hasselhoff & Co. are showing up at Venezuelan beaches, and some lifeguards there are trying to figure out how to deploy the torpedo-like floats that the Baywatch patrol favors.

With the help of reruns, the Baywatch phenomenon may last for years--if not forever. Paul Talbot of Fremantle Corp., the show's international distributor, notes that it will bring in money a full decade after production stops. By then the series that was a Hollywood joke will have made David Hasselhoff an extremely rich man, though he'll be a trifle old to still be on beach duty. Viewers will eventually crown another show the world's favorite, but chances are good that Baywatch's successor will be an equally glamorous-and equally far-fetched-fantasy about life in America.

--With reporting by Greg Burke/Rome, Lara Marlowe/Beirut, Anita Pratap/New Delhi and Kaitlin Quistgard/Buenos Aires, with other bureaus

[SIDEBAR]

THE WORLD WATCHES

In 1980, 400 million people around the world tuned in to Dallas for the episode that saw J.R. Ewing felled by a bullet. Back then it was a high-water mark for U.S. television entertainment on global screens, and the tide has yet to go out. Today viewers from Bahrain to Borneo are still hooked on an increasing flow of comedies, dramas and soap operas exported from America.

Suds--as in soap opera rather than beer--are doing so well that culturally conscious authorities in some countries are foaming at the mouth. The Bold and the Beautiful, for example, has a viewership of 200 million, spread across more than 80 countries, including Egypt, where it was a hit for three years. When the show aired between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m., Cairo's gridlock eased, but Muslim fundamentalists fumed, blaming the series for undermining public morality. They forced the show off the air, but public protest soon brought it back--albeit heavily edited to eliminate the steamy bedroom scenes. Eventually the fundamentalists won. So now the B&B faithful use satellite dishes in order to view the uncensored show broadcast by Israeli, Turkish and Italian stations.

Like Baywatch, many American shows gain a new lease on life overseas. In 1993 low ratings killed the soap Santa Barbara in the U.S., but it lives on in the states of the former Soviet Union. Twin Peaks disappeared from U.S. screens in 1992, but all 32 episodes remain afloat in 30 countries.

Despite France's cultural watchdogs, who have decreed quotas to keep programming primarily homegrown, the French enjoy fluff like Melrose Place. Grittier dramas, such as NYPD Blue, Chicago Hope and ER, have found audiences in Britain, Australia and the Middle East. Last week Israeli traffic cop Shalom Weib helped deliver a baby near the town of Kafr Kasim. Weib says he learned the procedure by watching an episode of ER.