• Royal Pains.10-11:15 p.m.

USA.

• The Listener.10-11 p.m.

WTVJ-NBC 6.

Summertime, and the TV is cheesy, full of ungodly-stupid reality shows, cheapie imports and burn-offs of stuff that was canceled months ago. Any show that doesn't make you want to thrust your face into a woodchipper feels like Masterpiece Theatre. Hence, my recommendation for USA's Royal Pains: Watching it won't induce uncontrollable compulsions toward self-mutilation. Hey, let's see if they'll use that in the promos.

Actually, it's a little better than that -- this medical-manners comedy is mildly likable, a sort of Northern Exposure in reverse: a gritty Jersey-boy emergency room surgeon finds himself exiled in the Hamptons, tending to the exotic drug overdoses and errant boob jobs of the indolent rich. It's hard not to feel affection for a show in which a grim-faced doctor, crouching over a body on a zillion-dollar Persian rug, shouts, ``I need a bottle of vodka, a sharp knife, a pen, a baggie and some duct tape.''

Mark Feuerstein (Good Morning, Miami) plays Hank Lawson, blacklisted by the New York City medical establishment after a billionaire hospital donor dies on his operating table. From there it's all downhill: His fiancée dumps him after catching him watching Jerry Springer, his furniture is repossessed as his bills mount, and finally even his Netflix account is suspended.

Enter brother Evan (Paulo Costanzo, Joey), a scuffling accountant who bullies him into a weekend of party-crashing in the Hamptons. Picking up ultra-rich chicks proves difficult at first. ''What kind of plane do you have?'' asks one. ``And please tell me it's yours. I am so over fractional ownership.''

But after Hank saves one heirhead princess from a potentially fatal overdose, and her host from a round of lurid Page Six headlines, he finds himself a hot commodity, both as a potential boyfriend and a ''concierge doctor'' who makes mansion calls. Treating patients with complaints like, ''My uvula dangles really longer than most people's,'' though, is not what Hank went to medical school for. ''Do you think we are who we care for?'' he muses to another doctor.

Royal Pains has some moments of genuine wit -- a lot more of them after Costanzo shows up. Not only does he get a lot of the best lines (his verdict on his brother's hermetic apartment: ''It smells like a moose had sex with a bucket of Chinese food in here'') but his obvious chemistry with Feuerstein raises the level of the whole show.

Chemistry is just one of the ingredients lacking in the Canadian-made The Listener, NBC's new drama about a psychic paramedic. Others include but are not limited to plot, dialogue and acting skill. If Americans had seen this thing in time, NAFTA never would have passed.

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