'Criminal Minds' think alike

LOS ANGELES - Forest Whitaker has portrayed a tortured jazz pioneer, a gay clothing designer, a samurai hitman, a charismatic pool hustler and a maniacal dictator, so it's a bit shocking that he's now chosen to play a clone.

The Oscar-winning star may lull you into believing that Sam Cooper, his role in the new CBS series "Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior," is a rich, complex character -- especially when Whitaker is delivering his sales pitch from the set that he helped design. But watch more than 10 minutes of Wednesday's premiere and you'll quickly realize that the dude is just one more lone-wolf investigator whose only purpose in life is to take a bite out of crime.

It may not be Whitaker's most creative decision, but it's probably one of his smartest. CBS remains TV's most-watched network because it keeps churning out hour after hour of detectives chasing the sickest killers on Earth, with little time to make goo-goo eyes at their colleagues.

This carbon-copy approach can rattle established stars. William Petersen and Mark Harmon both criticized the network for green-lighting spinoffs of their shows, "CSI" and "NCIS," because they worried their audience would get weary of being served the same ol' thing.

They overestimated our appetite for variety. Three "CSI" series are coexisting just fine, and "NCIS" is enjoying its best ratings ever, even with the arrival last season of "NCIS: LA."

"Yeah, there's a lot of crime dramas out there, but there's also a lot of soaps out there," said co-executive producer Deborah Spera. "Is there an end in sight? I doubt it. Look at the crime section in the bookstore. It's one of the most popular sections. People are fascinated by crime, how it works, who does them and how they are solved."

I'll buy that, but does the hero have to be so, well, familiar?

It's not that "Suspect Behavior" is bad. Viewers will have fun trying to figure out the motive of the kidnapper in this week's premiere, and I got a kick out of a future episode in which a beloved TV star from decades ago is cast as an unhinged killer. (Hint: It's not Alf.) It's well-made meatloaf -- but it's still meatloaf.

Why not shake up the recipe? I wish CBS had the creative juices to spotlight a crime fighter who wears a hand-me-down hat from McCloud and fights rural moonshiners in Kentucky (the FX channel's "Justified") or a government agent who ends his days of going after the mob by whipping himself on the back in his seedy hotel room (HBO's "Boardwalk Empire").

Too much? Well, what about casting Janeane Garofalo as the lead? She's actually part of the cast of "Suspect Behavior," although you'll be forgiven if you don't notice. Garofalo, who used to make fun of these kinds of commercial dramas, seems to spend most of her time hiding from the camera in fear that she might lose her alt-comedy credentials. Instead, a gutsy producer would give her center stage and an itchy trigger finger. That's the kind of suspect behavior I could get behind.