The setting is familiar for a Dick Wolf show - a nondescript courtroom where lawyers are in the thick of a "ripped from the headlines" murder trial just like those featured in his signature series, Law & Order.

San Diego security guard James Dailey is being tried for the death of his estranged wife, Guadalupe, who disappeared after a late-night argument with him. It's time for closing arguments and Deputy District Attorney Dan Goldstein is pacing the courtroom, his voice - distractingly reminiscent of comedian Ray Romano's - occasionally getting high-pitched as he goes over the details again for the jurors.

"She wants money to go to Las Vegas with another guy," Goldstein says. "And she wants him to pay the rent."

After a dramatic pause, he looks around the courtroom and adds: "Yikes."

Yikes?

This utterance in the premiere episode of Wolf's new reality series, Crime & Punishment, is among the more telling moments in the show, which debuts on NBC tonight at 10.

And the message is: Goldstein's no Sam Waterston, and this show is definitely no Law & Order.

For 12 years now, Wolf has garnered a loyal following with L&O;, one of the longest-running and most highly regarded prime-time shows in America. Together with its successful spinoff, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, L&O; has cultivated such a faithful fan base that millions tune in weekly to catch nightly reruns on A&E;, TNT or USA Network.

With Crime & Punishment, however, Wolf veers off on a tangent. He has said he wanted to create a "drama-mentary" that focuses on real cases in a San Diego courtroom, and his vision turns out to be a sort of Dateline NBC sans the studly Stone Phillips interjecting with faux-philosophical blather.

And the results can be uneven.

In L&O;, seasons and actors have come and gone, but viewers have always been assured of one thing - a well-produced show with sharp dialogue, wicked plot twists and an impassioned speech at the end by Waterston as Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy. Even if an episode's plot is Kate Moss thin, some constants make it worth sitting through. Detective Lennie Briscoe always manages to perk things up with a deadpan quip, and District Attorney Adam Schiff usually closes the show on just the right note - some cynical, pithy one-liner as he turns out the light and shuts the door.

In C&P;, however, the characters are so ... real.

Truth, supposedly, is stranger than fiction. But in comparing C&P; with L&O;, fiction may just prove to be more compelling.

Dan Goldstein in tonight's episode is a case in point. With his smart navy blue suits and athletic build, Goldstein exudes more style than one would expect of a deputy district attorney.

He does not, however, have a propensity for clever or pithy.

In a scene where he's going over the case with a colleague, his big conclusion is, "The guy's a NUT!"

In another, Goldstein exhibits a goober's penchant for stating the obvious: "I've just argued with my ex-wife about money and her going to Las Vegas with some other dude. ... That's pretty powerful motive."

While the characters are all-too-real in many ways, they are suspiciously TV-friendly in others. DDA Eugenia Eyherabide is perpetually put together with her matching earrings and necklaces and long flapper strings of pearls. And DDA Jill DiCarlo bears an uncanny resemblance to Jennifer Jason Leigh with a Morgan Fairchild mane. (Even her husband looks like an Italian-American version of Scott Wolf from Party of Five.)

Still, just when you're about to nod off from the courtroom drudgery, a defendant lunges at a man who testified against him, touching off a courtroom brawl that results in a man's shirt getting pulled off and an officer whipping out a nightstick and pounding on another. A mother bursts into tears as she hugs a deputy district attorney and thanks him for convicting the man who killed her daughter.

And in one of the most riveting scenes of the series so far, a 5-year-old girl is seen shyly telling a courtroom how her mother's boyfriend crept into her room one night and touched her "pee-pee part."

Yikes.

That's when you realize that there are some things that even a pro like Dick Wolf can't make up. And, perhaps, it can make for pretty dramatic TV after all.

Crime & Punishment airs at 10 p.m. Sundays on NBC (WBAL, Channel 11).