But "tepid" we'll get back to in a minute.

Fear Itself is a new horror anthology series from the makers of the Showtime horror anthology series Masters of Horror.

The great thing about MOH was that it was exactly what you'd expect: big names in horror doing one hour mini-movies for "No Limits" Showtime. For fans of horror, it was pretty cool. So I'm told.

MOH ran for two seasons before Showtime pulled the plug. Fear Itself is basically a retooled, toned-down version of what would have been MOH season three. But since there aren't any masters left (the first episode was written by the screenwriter of Critters 2) and there's not much horror to speak of (this is broadcast television after all), a name change was inevitable.

I was lobbying that they take a stand and call the series "Masters of Horror," but apparently prepositions are "out" this year.

(Which is ironic, because "in" is also a preposition.)

The first episode of FI was about what you'd expect: a formulaic plot about a bunch of young people trapped in a cabin, dying one by one; a prominent role for an NBC star (in this case, Friday Night Lights' Jesse Plemmons); plot holes big enough to exit the room through; and as many scares as your typical episode of ER.

Given that you can show the episodes of an anthology series in any order, you have to assume that they led with one of their strong ones. This does not inspire the confidence.

After one episode of Fear Itself, the only thing that I'm afraid of is being bored enough to sit through episode two. (Sorry. Every time I write a line like that, I get special "TV critic dollars" that I can use to bid on special online prizes. If I save up enough of them, I can buy Gene Shalit's moustache.)

To say that Swingtown is only mildly more entertaining is to insult mild entertainments everywhere. (Ka-ching.) Like Fear Itself, Swingtown also has a dubious cable pedigree. It was floated to HBO and (again) Showtime before finally getting picked up as a mid-season replacement by edgy-as-your-grandma CBS, then finally-er getting pushed back to the Summer because of the writer's strike.

That Swingtown was originally intended to air during the regular television season, as opposed to the previously described DVR wasteland that is Summer television, is the first hint that there might be some buried promise here.

The second hint comes with the the casting of Coupling's Jack Davenport as the male lead. (Davenport may be more familiar to American audiences as "that git from Pirates of the Carribean".) Davenport was great in Coupling, but I found him weirdly off-putting here, as he manages to pull off a convincing American accent only by using the same, wooden (but perfectly American-esque) delivery for every single line.

You can see in the pauses that he wants to have a personality, but he can't bring himself to emote for fear of letting out a high-pitched, uncontrolled burst of Britishisms: "Bloody Hell Wot Pip Pip Chim Cherie Stiff Upper Lip Governah!"

Worse, any time he's in a remotely sexual situation -- which, let's be honest, is pretty much the entire running time of the show -- I can't help but think of how much smarter and funnier and more compelling every episode of Coupling was than this.

When Davenport's character is about to have sex with his wife, she makes a joke about his stamina. And somewhere Jeff Coyle nods: "The Melty Man strikes again."

So I said "hints" before, but maybe "red herrings" is more like it. Here's hoping that after Swingtown get cancelled, CBS hires Davenport back to play a lunatic British ex-pat on How I Met Your Mother.

You can understand how the producers of a show, having been rejected by premium cable, might be open to reworking their shows for broadcast television. But what does network television get out of it?

Well, this is the Summer, and as my own viewing habits prove, it doesn't take much to get someone to watch. Sometimes, it's just the aura of edginess. Here, Fear Itself has to be made less scary for network and Swingtown has to be made less sexy. But they're still peddling that aura of fear and sex.

Call it "Theater of the Tepid."

The problem is that people who really crave... um... fear and sex... er... specifically on TV... Well, they can already get the good stuff on cable. That's literally the stuff that's scary and sexy and good. And the people who aren't watching those shows already (like, say, my Mom) are going to be just as turned off by the aura of fear and sex as they are by the more graphic cable alternatives.

The core audience, I suppose, are the kids who are still too young for the cable shows, like the two boys flipping through issues of Penthouse in Swingtown. They're not ready for the real thing. They're just looking for something Mom'll disapprove of.

Those kids will be better off in the long run stealing cable like the rest of us saving their allowances and spending wisely.

So what have we learned today? "Crappy and watered-down" is a bad mix. Personally, I'm pulling for a "Brilliant but gratuitous" backlash to take hold.

Maybe something starring Jack Davenport and his big silly British accent...