New Fox drama ‘The O.C.’ lacks dimension, vital campiness

Well, it sounded like a good idea.

I mean, let’s set a drama in the wealthy enclaves of California’s Orange County. It’s got “Dallas” or “Dynasty,” or at least “Falcon Crest,” written all over it.

No, instead “The O.C.,” debuting at 9 tonight on Fox, is more like “‘7th Heaven’ Goes West.” A family drama among the rich and infamous? Say it ain’t so.

Here’s the original concept for “The O.C.”: A good kid from the wrong side of the tracks (nothing says cutting-edge like an outdated colloquialism) got caught when his three-strikes-loser brother steals a car then tries to outrun the police. His public defender (played by Peter Gallagher, slumming from the cinema), who also came from a disadvantaged background before marrying money, hopes to set him on the right path by taking him home to his gated mansion on the hill.

Said defender’s wealthy wife protests, but it turns out she’s the only rich woman with a heart of gold (her friends, let’s say, are a word that rhymes with riches). The “bad boy” bonds with the couple’s socially awkward son.

More important, while smoking a cigarette, he has a cutesy meeting by the pool with the knockout who lives next door. He’s smitten, and she’s instantly torn between him and her lunkhead jock boyfriend.

The themes are pretty simplistic: He’s misunderstood, but he’s lucky in that he’s fallen in with the only rich people in Orange County who aren’t tres superficial. He’s also going to change the way those people look at life. A heavy burden.

While “The O.C.” does a good job at showing the excess of the wealthy, it doesn’t show any more dimensions of its characters. Viewers are just meant to cluck their tongues at these people who have more dollars than sense.

A drama like this must have camp to survive. And “The O.C.” is just soooo serious about itself.

Fox is wise to start this drama early, and maybe draw a little audience before it’s moved into its regular time slot of 9 p.m. Thursdays, a death hole opposite “C.S.I.” and “Will & Grace.” But it’s probably not going to last long enough to make that transition.