TELEVISION

THEY COVER THE WEIRD: All the News That's Fit to Destroy Mankind: At one point in "Men in Black," Tommy Lee Jones buys a fistful of tabloid newspapers and informs Will Smith that they represent the only journalism that can be trusted. From that throwaway line comes "The Chronicle," a new series on the Sci-Fi Channel debuting at 9 p.m. Saturday.
     Originally developed at NBC as "News From the Edge," "The Chronicle" follows a beleaguered aspiring journalist named Tucker Burns (Chad Willett) who can only get a job with the tabloid that provides the series with its title. The rundown tenement in which the paper is housed belies the technology within its walls; the staff includes the reincarnation of Mother Teresa, a pig-boy in the research department and a UFO abductee/ace reporter (Rena Sofer) who scores interviews, however unrevealing, with the Antichrist.
     Tucker, naturally, is a bit nonplussed by all this and loses his exasperated girlfriend besides. His first assignment is to track down the "Brooklyn Bloodsucker," who turns out to be an alien/spiritual leader upon whose shoulders the fate of New York rests.
     Cribbing from "Men in Black" as well as "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" (only here, the balding, apoplectic editor, played by Jon Polito, believes his charges' outlandish yarns), "The Chronicle" is clever enough but could use a little more spring in its step and witty crackle in its dialogue.

— David Kronke