Say this for Fox. They do offer some different TV series.

At 8 p.m. Fridays, CBS and ABC serve up sickly sweet comedies for the kiddies. On NBC, the 12th weekly edition of “Dateline” provides scandal and pseudo-news. UPN has got the western throwback “Legacy.” All fairly standard stuff.

But on Fox, a bounty hunter from hell is tracking down 113 escaped evil souls. His mission: Kill them, and send them back down under. That makes “Brimstone,” premiering at 8 tonight, a perfect series for the family hour.

Not that the time slot is the show’s fault. “Brimstone” was originally slated to air at 9 p.m. Tuesday, but Fox moved it to Friday after axing the reputed comedies “Living in Captivity” and “Getting Personal.”

“Brimstone” is an acquired taste, and will be a difficult sell. The series tells the tale of Ezekiel Stone (played by Peter Horton of “thirtysomething”), a highly decorated New York City detective who got sent to hell for killing his wife’s rapist, after he himself is killed in the line of duty.

After 15 years there, the devil makes Stone an offer, a way to live again. There’s been a jailbreak, and 113 vile criminals have made their way back to Earth. Stone must send them back by shooting out “the windows to the soul,” otherwise known as their eyes. Needless to say, the ultraviolent “Brimstone” isn’t going to appeal to “Diagnosis Murder” fans.

Horton is convincing as the conflicted, tormented Stone, doomed to repeat his crime of killing a criminal over and over again. John Glover is deliciously Machiavellian as the devil, who appears once or twice an episode to point the ex-detective toward his quarry.

The biggest obstacle “Brimstone” faces is that, by design, it is unceasingly grim, and that isn’t eased by occasional gallows humor. It makes the series following it, “Millennium,” look almost lighthearted by comparison. After all, that show’s dour protagonist, Frank Black, is only hunting serial killers, not the scum of the ages.

“Brimstone” is for those who like their occult straight, with no twist. And except for death-metal fans and devil worshipers, it’s hard to say who that would be.