TELEVISION: MANNIX LIVES!

MAC SWIFT IS THE KIND OF COP who doesn't have to worry about pockmarks. Unlike the physically imperfect lawmen who now populate prime-time TV--the Dennis Franzes and Jerry Orbachs--Mac's skin is invincibly smooth. Nothing, it seems, can scar him as he dodges punches and pummels bat-wielding thugs with an assured agility that seems to say, "Hey, I'd look even better toppling Christy Turlington on a sandbar in Maui." Happily for Mac, his appearance isn't all he has going for him. Smart enough to have developed an immensely profitable software program, this New York City police officer lives not in some aluminum-sided row house in Queens but rather in a vast SoHo loft replete with abstract paintings and expensive sheets. Sure, he has problems--like a stiff, play-by-the-rules police chief--but they're never anything that a blond and a good Merlot can't help him solve.

Swift (Jack McCaffrey), the hero of the new drama Swift Justice (UPN, Wednesdays, 9 p.m. est), belongs to another television era, a time before cop shows like NYPD Blue, Homicide and Law & Order grounded the genre in reality with unglamorously complex characters and somber portrayals of urban life. But to all good things must come a backlash. And so Swift Justice harks back to a period of frequent car chases, poorly staged punch-outs and cartoonishly evil bad guys.

Mac is not the only retro, Mannix-style lawman to pop up on the midseason schedule spouting lines like, "You want to kill me, huh? Kill me. Show me how stupid you are." Last week also marked the arrival of Nash Bridges, centerpiece of an eponymously titled series (CBS, Fridays, 10 p.m. est) about a San Francisco police inspector who races around in a 1970 Barracuda and combats the bad guys with tough talk ("I don't give a damn about you boys--but this guy, his ass is mine"), swift kicks and an occasional disabling spritz of WD-40 right to the eye. In a priceless nod to nostalgia, Bridges is played by TV's best-known exemplar of rose-tinted crime fighting--yes, Don Johnson.

Nash Bridges. Mac Swift. Like Thomas Magnum and Tony Baretta, these names imply a benighted sense of macho can do-ness. Not surprisingly, perhaps, both shows wallow in an anachronistic treatment of women. For the most part they are portrayed as victims-either of Bridges' noncommittal ways or of nasty evildoers from whom they need Y-chromosome-enhanced protection. Prostitutes in danger turn up on both shows, looking not at all as they do on the streets of the grittiest precincts in urban America, or even as they do on NYPD Blue. Waifish and fresh-faced, they resemble well-educated publishing assistants saving up for a smart twin set.

Not much better in this regard is High Incident, a recently launched ABC police series (Mondays, 9 p.m. est). Fortunately, no character is named High or Incident. But despite a high-class pedigree--the show is produced by the Dreamworks team of Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, with creative guidance from monologist Eric Bogosian--High Incident maintains an embarrassingly CHiPs-like feel as its cast of eight Ray-Ban-wearing patrol-car cops meander about a fictional Los Angeles suburb responding to wacky calls.