Revolting Extremely Gross Images Add A Sickening Element To The Already Dark ‘Millennium’

“Millennium” premieres Friday at 9 p.m. on KAYU-Channel 28 (channel 3 on Spokane’s Cox Cable).

‘I have a wife and a kid,” investigator Frank Black says early in the premiere of “Millennium.” “I want them to live in a place where they can feel safe.”

Then what on Earth are they doing in a Chris Carter series?

Carter, creator of “The X-Files,” ups the creepy ante in “Millennium,” which premieres on Fox at 9 p.m. Friday, the former “X-Files” slot.

The series revolves around Black, a former police investigator, expert on serial killers and a “profiler,” someone who can look at bits of evidence and somehow get into a killer’s head.

The show bears many similarities to “Profiler,” an NBC series on the same theme, but “Millennium” is a much darker and more disturbing show. It also appears more ready to delve into complicated conspiracies - Black’s newest job is with a shadowy organization called the Millennium Group, which is battling evil in society.

Movie audiences have been drawn to similar exercises in terror - “Silence of the Lambs,” “Seven,” “Copycat” - while on TV, “The X-Files” got its new season off to a successful start a couple of weeks ago.

And “Millennium” is open about some of its influences. A line in the premiere will remind viewers of “Silence of the Lambs.” The murky look of the show comes courtesy of the art director on “Seven.”

And Carter himself sees it as branching off from “The X-Files” into stories he felt he just couldn’t tell in that show’s format.

Where his current hit deals with otherworldly matters, Carter said he also wanted to do “stories which had to do with psychological terror, the real world with real criminals and truly human monsters.”

These monsters may be far more frightening to viewers than the things going bump in “The X-Files.” They almost certainly will be more nauseating, as Carter seems to be pushing the limits of grossness not only for his shows but for television generally.

A key scene in the “Millennium” premiere has the unearthing of a person buried alive, eyes and mouth sewn shut, lying in a pool of blood. When Fox sent a preview tape to reporters last summer, questions about the content arose immediately.

Other recent shows with questionable content have made cuts before telecast. But Carter maintained that what reporters saw is what viewers will see.

Or not see, I suspect.

Put side by side with “Profiler,” “Millennium” is the better-made show. It also has a good cast, topped by Lance Henriksen as Black. But there’s nothing fine enough in “Millennium” to make me join its wallowing in carnage, sleaze and darkness.

Carter, as you might imagine, has a different point of view.

“I anticipated I would have to defend some things,” he told reporters in Hollywood in July. “I know the show has some disturbing images in it.

“But I think that if you look at what the show is, and the reason I wanted to do this show, you’ll see that those images are actually in there for a purpose.

“They’re not gratuitous. They’re not just to shock,” he said. Instead, he said he wants to establish a context for his hero, “and you can only create an interesting and bright hero, to me, if you set him against a very dark background.”

Except that this bright hero has a dark side, too. He’s haunted by his own skill, torn emotionally by what he sees when he enters killers’ minds.

Henriksen has done some of his best work playing villains, and he brings the necessary ambiguity to Black.

Others may find that intriguing. I won’t deny that even extremes of violence and terror can be made artfully, as “Silence of the Lambs” demonstrates. But there’s not that much art in “Millennium.” And my stomach still turns at the thought of that burial scene.