Across the country tonight, fingers will be crossed at UPN stations. "Everybody Hates Chris" debuts at 8, and many folks are wondering if this will be the show that crosses over. It should be a smash. NBC's "My Name Is Earl" is gut-bustingly funny. "Everybody Hates Chris" makes your sides ache — and, at times, your soul. In this dual effect is the stuff of great comedy.

The show is based on the 1980s Brooklyn childhood of comedian Chris Rock, who narrates. The humor is one-half observations on race and class — so casual, the impact doesn't sink in until later — and one-half loving homage to the value of family.

With the exit of "Everybody Loves Raymond," "Chris" also has the best cast chemistry on TV. The pilot, about 13-year-old Chris (Tyler Williams) attending his first day of school in a hostile Italian-American neighborhood, exudes the confidence and expertise of a well-established series.

But "Chris" is on UPN. The only current programs to register beyond the network's African-American base are the semi-hit "America's Next Top Model," the under-watched "Veronica Mars" and the venerable "WWE Smackdown!"

History tells us minority characters and poor ones can find broad audience favor. In the 1970s, "Sanford and Son," "The Jeffersons" and "Chico and the Man" were Top 10 shows. In the 1980s, Bill Cosby and his middle-class brood took over, while "Roseanne" brought the working-class struggle to millions of screens.

That was before improved research and the advent of cable tightened the grip of demographics and advertising dollars on TV content. Viewers became sliced and diced into marketing slivers that fed a narrow sense of cultural and financial identity.

One result was a drastic decline in shows watched by both black and white viewers. By the late '90s, only "Monday Night Football" and "60 Minutes" reliably bridged the gap.

Meanwhile, networks pursued series with affluent white role models detached from gritty cares — "Seinfeld," "Friends," "Frasier." The process diverted resources from shows portraying the real or perceived underclass, one reason so many were so abysmal.

"Everybody Hates Chris" grew in part out of a desire to do better. At a session with critics last July, executive producer and co-creator Ali LeRoi discussed the show's scope.

"There's war," he said. "There's racism. There's fights. There's arguments. And then you find the joke in it. We're taking real situations as much as we can and trying to find the comedy in them, as opposed to trying to manufacture comedy out of artifice."

He and Rock succeed handsomely. "Chris" captures the bittersweet experience of growing up in what was among the nation's most dangerous neighborhoods. By doing so, it taps a great and recently underutilized vein of American comedy — the struggling little people with big dreams.

The show opens with the swift establishment of Chris' family, mistakenly moving from the projects to the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, which was about to descend into a crack epidemic.

A generous chunk of "Chris" is fueled by Rock's narration, which is richly anecdotal and peppered with the paradoxical observations that are his trademark.

Protesting his mother's decision to send him to a white school two bus trips away, the young Chris wonders how bad the local junior high can be.

Then shots and screams ring out and the grown-up Chris reflects, "Much like rock 'n' roll, school shootings were also invented by blacks and stolen by whites."

But the series doesn't rely on Rock. Two other elements provide rich breadth: hilarious, quick-cutting montages used to establish character, and vignettes that show interaction.

Sometimes, all three components conspire. Halfway through tonight's opener, young Chris foolishly agrees to an after-school fight with a bully in the mistaken notion that school fights always get stopped by an adult.

He's wrong. The subsequent collage of fist-swinging, clock-turning and commentary — conducted to the tune of "Ebony and Ivory" — is a laugh-or-cry high mark.

Under fine direction, a terrific assemblage of actors flesh out their roles and give "Chris" the cozy turbulence of a real family.

As Chris' mother, Rochelle, Tichina Arnold epitomizes the passionate, constantly aggravated state of the vigilant urban mom. Dad is Terry Crews, and he perfectly complements Arnold's performance with a massive, reassuring presence that speaks softly and implies a big stick.

Ultimately, though, it's Williams' amazing performance as young Chris that lets us see the comedian in his developmental years. Smart, skinny and aware, he projects the quintessence of the kid who later in life will wreak revenge on larger, dumber foes.

The series gives every indication of consistency. It's got plenty of characters and plot lines to follow, plus the teeming world outside the family nest.

Funny, warm and fabulous is why you should watch "Everybody Hates Chris." But at a time when Katrina has stirred up old divisions in America, there's another reason — a chance to reflect on home truths as well as the truths of home.

It's "Criminal"

Like a mechanic wielding a dipstick, I wonder every fall how many more police procedurals the public mind can hold.

"Criminal Minds," which gets a special preview at 10 tonight on CBS before moving to its unenviable slot opposite "Lost" at 9 Wednesdays, is the latest of the breed.

It stars Mandy Patinkin as leader of an FBI behavioral analysis team that profiles serial killers and the like — the most twisted minds in America. Adhering to the formula of "CSI" and "Without a Trace," Patinkin's group consists of members of younger and slightly younger generations, including Thomas Gibson and Shemar Moore.

"Criminal Minds" isn't as good as these predecessors, though it aspires in a pretentious way to be smart by quoting famous authors. But your like or dislike of the series likely will depend on Patinkin, whose heavy, quirky style is not to everyone's taste.

Tonight's opener features a character called the Seattle Strangler and lots of rain. It's pretty pedestrian stuff, with the gruesomely staged captive female du jour.

At one point, Patinkin's character cites Churchill: "The farther back you can look, the farther forward you can see." Looking back, I see forensic overload on CBS; looking ahead, I predict less.

Note: On tonight at 8:30 is UPN's "Love Inc.," an awful sitcom about women who run a matchmaking agency. Perhaps suited to a target demo raised on reality TV and blogs, the dialogue in "Love Inc." contains lots of "I-me-my" lines masked as female sharing. Stars include Busy Philipps and a badly out-of-place Holly Robinson Peete.

Kay McFadden: kmcfadden@seattletimes.com