



Elvis lives. John Kennedy is president. Vinyl records have pushed CDs off the market.

It's an upside-down world, all right, and whiz-kid scientist Quinn Mallory (Jerry O'Connell) has transported himself there via a homemade gizmo in his San Francisco basement. In this parallel universe, red stoplights mean go, and U.S. citizens are moving illegally into Mexico.

This will be the first of many alternate Earths that Quinn leaps into in Fox's hugely entertaining Sliders, debuting tonight with a two-hour pilot. Next week, the hourlong series moves to its regular 9 p.m. Wednesday time slot, after Beverly Hills, 90210.

A better time period would be 8 p.m. Fridays, where more kids could see this imaginative sci-fi show. Sliders made me feel like a kid again, a pretty neat trick for a time-traveling series. Take the leap yourself, and you'll see what I mean.

The premise will thrill anyone who enjoyed the old Time Tunnel series, Quantum Leap or the Back to the Future movies. Sliders exploits "what-might-have-been" for some way-out adventures.

In tonight's nifty opener, Quinn meets a cleverer version of himself. This "slider" from a different dimension explains that jumping into the alternative universes - through a wormhole filled with psychedelic colors - is a lot like playing a roulette wheel. Each slot represents another dimension, and there could be hundreds of places to land.

The veteran "slider" holds out the enticing prospect of visiting a nearly perfect world but departs before giving Quinn some crucial information about the gizmo's timer. That oversight proves costly.

Eager to demonstrate his discovery, Quinn takes a joy ride with adoring pal Wade Wells (Sabrina Lloyd of Central Florida) and overbearing professor Maximillian Arturo (John Rhys-Davies). Soul singer Rembrandt "Crying Man" Brown (Cleavant Derricks) has the misfortune to be sucked into the wormhole while driving to Candlestick Park to perform the national anthem.

The nearly perfect world is nowhere tonight. The four travelers tumble into a nuclear winter. San Francisco is frozen over, and terrifying winds force a hasty jump to another world.

The travelers think they have come home. Far from it. They have fallen into a world where communism triumphed. The United States lost the Korean War, and the old domino theory became reality.

A Lenin statue stands where Lincoln was paid tribute. Making a phone call can be a crime. A telethon demands viewers support public television "or else." A homeless man in Quinn's world has become a U.S. senator in the Communist system. And in tonight's loopiest scene, the Communist version of People's Court unfolds, presided over by Commissar Wapner.

The travelers join the underground, and Wade learns that her parallel self is a much-respected freedom fighter. The dialogue has some choice wordplay, none better than: "She's off looking for herself."

At the fade-out, the four jump again, and think they've arrived home, only to experience another shocker. They seem doomed to travel among the parallel universes and never make it home.

Which is their misfortune, but a delight for viewers.

The series veers from the comic to the terrifying with surprising dexterity. How to explain the show's weird and satisfying tone? Just look at the creators' past credits. Tracy Torme wrote for Star Trek: The Next Generation and Saturday Night Live, and Robert Weiss produced the Naked Gun films and Kentucky Fried Movie. A sample upcoming plot: The quartet visits a world where men are considered the weaker sex.

Sliders is hardly a perfect show. The soul singer is inserted awkwardly into tonight's plot. The action stops for a conventional battle - about the zillionth in my experience - between the rebels and the Communists. The cheesy special effects in the nuclear winter sequence will make you long for big-screen dazzle. Though the setting is San Francisco, the filming is done in Vancouver, British Columbia.

No matter. The premise is the thing here. The show builds such good will, through its engrossing plot twists and its likable stars, that you sit back and enjoy the ride. And tonight's fade-out - simultaneously poignant, sad and scary - is certainly reason enough to tune in next week. Like Dorothy after Oz, these travelers will learn, over and over, there's no place like home.

This is not the kind of show that allows a lot of room for characterization and showy acting, but the four stars impress through sheer personality. As the young friends, and possible sweethearts, O'Connell and Lloyd are utterly winning. Rhys-Davies blusters most authoritatively, and comic relief Derricks knows how to play exasperation for laughs, especially in the People's Court scenes.

Among the new spring series I've seen, Sliders stands out as the most enjoyable. "What-might-have-been" is usually a pointless exercise, but here it makes for some rousing entertainment.

Or as soul singer Crying Man puts it: "Hey, that trip was a trip!"

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