dawn of the new superheroes; Joan Juliet Buck finds there is nothing they can't do-live forever, raise the dead, or smite enemies with strange powers.(television programs)(Television program review)

Byline: Joan Juliet Buck

This season's shows all seem to center on the pathos of the lonely supergifted. We have cops with superior powers, a pie baker who can raise the dead, and two unwitting recipients of classified government information and priceless gizmos. None of these heroes is able to enjoy their power, feel pleasure, or know love; their loneliness is a little like the loneliness of Frankenstein or Tony Soprano, but because they are on network TV and not HBO, they are kindly and relieve their pain by fighting on the side of good and performing the occasional miracle. The writers had fun this season.

New Amsterdam (Fox) is elegant, romantic hokum. John Amsterdam is a handsome, mysterious New York City detective with a strange accent. He is more than 400 years old, a survivor of early Dutch Colonial times. Wounded in a battle, he was given eternal life by a female shaman from an Indian tribe until the day he should find his true love. He's played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, a star in Denmark, and New Amsterdam is directed by Lasse Hallstrom. The series is nostalgic, which befits a man who has truly seen it all.

John Amsterdam cannot stay with any woman for long. He's physically invulnerable and relaxes by making the same fine tables that he made as a master craftsman a century or two ago. One day, as he chases a perp into a subway station, a woman steps off a train and his heart stops. Could it be Her? Amsterdam crashes to the ground. The woman, who is a doctor, kneels by him but fails to save his life. Time of death is declared, and he's wheeled into the morgue. But Amsterdam revives and escapes back to his job as a homicide cop. He will now chase murderers and try to track down his true love. The criminals won't hurt him, but love will kill him.

The notion that love kills also drives Pushing Daisies (ABC), a fantasy about a pie baker (Lee Pace) who can bring the dead back to life by touching them, but only at a terrible price; he can also kill with one touch. He has a sideline resuscitating murder victims long enough to ask them who did it (a question that was central to Raines, last year's now-dead Jeff Goldblum show). He uses his gift to bring his childhood sweetheart back from the dead, but if he ever touches her, she will die all over again. The bouncy pilot is directed by Barry Sonnenfeld.

The sensual British actress Michelle Ryan plays Jaime Sommers in the drama Bionic Woman (NBC). She starts off soft and yielding, with big sensitive eyes and a passive sweetness, a part-time bartender and college dropout who is in charge of her bad-tempered ...