Remote Patrol

FRASIER AND DHARMA NEED FUNNIER HONEYS, AND X-FILES COULD USE A MORGAN TRANSPLANT

It's a new year, and I've got a few TV resolutions to make. I resolve to suffer through another entire episode of Fox's Ally McBeal, if only to see what all the fuss is about. I resolve to read between 8:30 and 9 p.m. on Thursdays, so as not to subject myself to another atrocious second of NBC's Union Square. And I resolve to stop taking potshots at CBS' Murphy Brown, since it's not nice to speak ill of the near dead (I'm referring to the show, not the character -- oops, broke that one already).

But I'm not the only one with bad habits. Plenty of TV shows would be wise to make a few resolutions of their own for 1998. Here are a few helpful suggestions: FRASIER (NBC, Tuesdays, 9-9:30 p.m.) should resolve to give Kelsey Grammer's title character a girlfriend who's as funny as he is. The terminally lovelorn shrink had more dates than usual last year, going out with a supermodel (a sorely miscast Sela Ward) and a powerful attorney (a chilly Lindsay Frost). It was amusing to watch Frasier become enamored of his lovers' celebrity lifestyles, but the women's roles were seriously underwritten. Ex-wife Lilith (Bebe Neuwirth) matches Frasier yuk for yuk, but her annual visits just aren't enough.

NYPD BLUE (ABC, Tuesdays, 10-11 p.m.) should resolve to stop revealing the killers' identities from the get-go almost every week. The recent two-parter in which Simone (Jimmy Smits) and Sipowicz (Dennis Franz) persuaded a father (the remarkable Brian Markinson) to confess to the murder of his young son added some much-needed emotional depth, but it would've been even more effective had there been some doubt as to the guy's guilt. Take a clue from NBC's Law & Order and Homicide: Life on the Street, which sometimes even let the culprits get away.

JUST SHOOT ME (NBC, Tuesdays, 9:30-10 p.m.) should resolve to quit trying to be so artsy-fartsy and concentrate on just being funny. The sitcom's protracted send-ups of King Lear and Annie Hall were painfully arch. Shakespeare and Woody Allen references -- are they trying to turn off mainstream viewers?

THE PRETENDER (NBC, Saturdays, 8-9 p.m.) should resolve to get a decent haircut. Michael T. Weiss' Jarod goes undercover as a doctor one week, a lawyer the next, yet he's always got that dorky Caesar-meets-George Clooney 'do. Maybe he could pose as a hairdresser one week and give himself a new coif.

DHARMA & GREG (ABC, Wednesdays, 8:30-9 p.m.) should resolve to dole out a few jokes to Thomas Gibson's Greg. Sure, we adore Jenna Elfman's dippy hippie, Dharma, but her straitlaced TV spouse got more laughs as a humorless doctor on CBS' Chicago Hope.

THE X-FILES (Fox, Sundays, 9-10 p.m.) should resolve to rehire mad genius Darin Morgan. Millennium is a lost cause; the episode Morgan wrote and directed reviving Jose Chung (Charles Nelson Reilly) was its finest -- but lowest-rated -- hour ever. And when The X-Files tries to clone Morgan's idiosyncratic style (e.g., the black-and-white goof on the Frankenstein myth), it merely seems like a weak imitation.