Jonathan Storm: An affable, easygoing pair of semislacker private eyes

Two new series jump the gun on the fall season Wednesday, both chasing the small-network holy grail of television: "branding."

Terriers, 10 p.m. on cable's FX, and Hellcats, 9 p.m. on CW57, are solid exemplars of each network's sales strategy, on target with each one's desired audience.

At FX, that means discerning adults, maybe a few more men than women, seeking offbeat fare with complex characters and perhaps a seasoning of dark humor. Terriers is one step below such FX paragons as Justified and Sons of Anarchy (which returns for its third season Tuesday), but that still puts it solidly among the fall's best new series.

At the CW, the desired audience is teen and preteen girls whose parents apparently don't care what they watch. This time, instead of focusing on young, languid, half-clothed degenerates, the network has found a show that focuses on young, athletic, half-clothed college students.

But it's a CW college, so the students aren't working in classes. They're on the cheerleading squad, and even the smart one turns stupid to make the grade. The show's going for a Glee vibe, but instead of feeling uplift and inspiration as you watch the skin-baring cheer performances, you feel a little cheap.

On Terriers, it's the characters who are delightfully cheap, living on the edge of society in a town that seems at least slightly removed from the rest of the world.

In real life, Ocean Beach is a funky neighborhood in San Diego, but here it's promoted to a full-fledged municipality with a police force, from which the (now recovering) alcoholic Hank Dolworth has been booted. Teamed with Britt Pollack, an equally unemployed partner of less-specific origins, he operates as an unlicensed, unlisted, unassuming private eye who'll do just about anything to stay above water.

Jeff Bridges would be perfect for the part, but he was unavailable, so the producers hired Donal Logue and paired him with Michael Raymond-James, who became available after it turned out that True Blood's Rene Lenier was not the friendly guy everybody thought, and had to be killed.

Both men have relationship issues. Dolworth's trying to hang onto his newly engaged ex-wife. Pollack and his girlfriend, not engaged, are taking tiny steps toward parenthood by adopting a dachshund.

These two are the easiest-going of slackers, except when they see injustice or a chance to make a slightly shady buck. There was much buzz earlier this year about a remake of The Rockford Files. It may still be in the works. But Terriers, which channels Rockford at every turn, makes it doubly unnecessary.

In the first episode, the boys liberate a dognapped pooch from a big lug by posing as principals from the Gomez Bros. pool-maintenance company. In the second, they seek to collect the reward for holdup man Montell Gobright by posing as small-time gangsters, trying to extort protection money from his tarot-reading girlfriend, Agatha Haggelforth.

Everyone seems to be having a good time. That makes Terriers easy to watch, an important quality for a successful TV show.

But as happens so frequently on the CW, you can see the "kids" (the biggest name, High School Musical star Ashley Tisdale, is 25 now) in Hellcats sweat. It's not from their hot-bod cheerleading routines, but from trying to keep a straight face as the network contrives to stuff them into yet another fancy-label, brand-name can.

Terriers

Premieres at 10 p.m. Wednesday on FX.