Ellen Gray | 'Raines' doesn't measure up to 'Medium'

RAINES. 10 p.m. tomorrow, Channel 10.

MEDIUM. 10 tonight, Channel 10.

DETECTIVE Michael Raines (Jeff Goldblum) sees dead people.

They don't necessarily see him.

So before you go lumping NBC's "Raines" in with NBC's "Medium" or CBS' "Ghost Whisperer" or Court TV's "Psychic Detectives," all of which require viewers to make certain leaps of faith regarding an afterlife or extra-sensory perception, stop.

And lump it instead with shows about people who regularly experience hallucinations.

So far, I've got "Ally McBeal," "Rescue Me" and "Six Feet Under." (And possibly "Mr. Ed," though like "Bewitched's" Gladys Kravitz, Wilbur might simply have been more observant than most humans.) You may well remember others.

Still, "Raines" stands out, if only because Goldblum is so very, very tall, and his character so very, very strange.

"Raines" creator Graham Yost has a wonderful sense of place, and Los Angeles, which he turned into a major character in "Boomtown," looks even better in "Raines," which talks film noir but can't resist that L.A. sun, even to the point of having Raines experience some of his hallucinations on the beach.

Nice work if you can get it.

Maybe he's been out in the sun too long, though, because Raines' conversations with the dead - mostly victims in cases he's working - aren't exactly riveting.

The hallucinations, after all, only know as much as Raines himself does at any given moment (and tend to change appearance as his knowledge of them changes). All this is meant to give us a window into Raines' thought processes, but the effect instead is to make him appear befuddled most of the time.

Unless you're Inspector Clouseau - or Andy Richter, whose new sitcom, "Andy Barker, P.I.," is "Raines' " lead-in tomorrow night - befuddled is not a good look for a detective.

Yost has nevertheless gathered talented believers to "Raines," including Madeleine Stowe as the shrink Raines' captain (Matt Craven) insists he see in next week's episode, Craven himself and Malik Yoba as Charlie Lincoln, Raines' former partner.

Goldblum, though, feels, well, unbelievable - as a detective and as a man struggling with what most people would consider signs of serious mental illness.

It says something that "Medium," which every week offers up scenarios in which working mom Allison Dubois (Patricia Arquette) dreams about things that almost always lead to the apprehension of criminals, is easier to swallow than "Raines."

Not that it's Allison Dubois, psychic DA's office employee, that I tune in for.

Even for those of us who might believe that psychics sometimes provide help to law enforcement, the too-neat solutions to most of Allison's cases are going to seem far-fetched.

But "Medium" gets me where I live. It's Allison Dubois, wife and working mom, and Joe (Jake Weber), the working dad she's married to, who keep me coming back each week.

Maybe it's just that neither of them ever seems to get enough sleep, and that half their conversations focus on who's driving the kids to school, and that those kids regularly offer challenges that no parenting book could have prepared them for, but that's a family I recognize.

The missing girls and the serial killers and the plane-crash premonitions?

That's just her job.

As for "Raines," if I were that interested in characters who merely talk to themselves, I'd stick with the subway.

Or look in the mirror. *

Send e-mail to graye@phillynews.com.