THE WEEK

A guide to notable programs by BRUCE FRETTS.

(Times are Eastern daylight and are subject to change.)

PREMIERES

When last we left LIVING SINGLE (Fox, Aug. 31, 8-8:30 p.m.), Regine (Kim Fields Freeman) had threatened to vacate the apartment after arguing with Khadijah (Queen Latifah). The third-season premiere answers the question, Will their friend ship survive? But the more important question is, Will Single survive against Friends? Meanwhile, the new flight-attendant farce, THE CREW (Fox, Aug. 31, 8:30-9 p.m.), gets a three-week jump on its new NBC foe, The Single Guy. Since taping its limp pilot last spring, The Crew has added All My Children stud Dondre T. Whitfield to its cast. But Guy has its own slab of beefcake: Ernest Borgnine!

To paraphrase a wise man, space is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you're gonna get. For example, in the second-season premiere of STAR TREK: VOYAGER (UPN, Aug. 28, 8-9 p.m.) Janeway and company are just toodling through the galaxy when they stumble upon the solution to one of history's great mysteries: What ever happened to Amelia Earhart? Answer: She was abducted by aliens and frozen. Despite the wildly implausible premise, the story has a kicky charm, especially when a revived Earhart (NYPD Blue's Sharon Lawrence) bonds with Trek First Lady Janeway. Nevertheless, let's hope this Unsolved Mysteries approach is a one-shot deal, and that next week's episode doesn't find the crew landing on a planet ruled by infamous hijacker D.B. Cooper.

-- Albert Kim

Calm down, Trekkies. KIRK (WB, Aug. 23, 8:30-9 p.m.) is not a spin-off resurrecting William Shatner's captain. It's a new sitcom resurrecting Growing Pains' Kirk Cameron. And that's all you need to know.

A Melrose Place-meets-The Mary Tyler Moore Show look at an L.A. TV news operation, LIVE SHOT (UPN, Aug. 29, 8-10 p.m., Tuesdays starting Sept. 5, 9-10 p.m.) features such standard-issue characters as the eager-beaver producer (Cheryl Pollak, Alison's ex-best friend on Melrose), the arrogant anchorman (David Birney, looking embalmed), the backstabbing anchorwoman (Rebecca Staab), and the burly news director (Animal House grad Bruce McGill). With tab-TV references (Jerry Springer, Hard Copy) and risque lingo (one telephoto lens is nicknamed ''Long Dong Silver''), Live Shot has an impudent energy, but it wouldn't last two weeks on a real network.

MOVIES

From the late-night barracks bull sessions to the endless aerial-combat sequences, THE TUSKEGEE AIRMEN (HBO, Aug. 26, 8-9:45 p.m.) employs every World War II-movie cliche. There's only one difference: The pilots are African-American. Laurence Fishburne looks too grizzled to play a naive Iowan who joins an all-black fighter squadron and ends up battling both the Nazis and the racism of his Caucasian colleagues. And, as in the WWII-flier flick Memphis Belle, John Lithgow contributes a hammy cameo as a bureaucrat. But the suppler performances of Courtney B. Vance (The Hunt for Red October) as the group's soft-spoken drill instructor and Andre Braugher (Homicide) as Benjamin O. Davis, their valiant commander in North Africa, save Airmen from crashing.