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[ J O Y C E_.M I L L M A N__O N_.T E L E V I S I O N ] Why are "Dilbert" and "Sports Night" like a day at the office? Because watching them is a grind. BY JOYCE MILLMAN It's the era of the 80-hour work week -- which might explain why workplace sitcoms aren't as popular as they used to be. Most of the comedies in the Nielsen Top 20 these days ("Friends," "Frasier," "Everybody Loves Raymond," "Jesse," "Home Improvement," "Dharma and Greg") are shows about families and friends, where characters have time to stop and smell the roses and tend to their relationships and feel their feelings 'n' stuff. Yeah, right. Once again, TV comes through with an escapist fantasy to fit the times. But the workplace sitcom hasn't gone away. UPN's "Dilbert" and ABC's "Sports Night," two of the season's most-hyped new series, proudly carry on the work-com tradition, serving the needs of all the hardy realists out there who've got jobs instead of lives and don't need no stinkin' happy family comedies to make the pain go away. Not surprisingly, given its huge ready-made following, the Scott Adams-produced "Dilbert" sitcom has been an instant hit for UPN. The animated series has been on the air for less than a month, and it's already been renewed for another season, which sounds pretty impressive until you remember that it's on a network where anything that scores in whole positive integers gets renewed for another season. Anyway, "Dilbert" (which Adams co-created with former "Seinfeld" producer Larry Charles) is faithful to the strip -- maybe a little too faithful. Its observations about computer-engineering culture and cubicle life from the perspective of overworked, miserable wage slaves are more chuckle-worthy than fall-down funny; they're better suited to four panels of print than 30 minutes of TV. Adams' spartan, doodle-y drawing style is nothing much to look at, and while the voice actors (Daniel Stern as Dilbert, Kathy Griffin as Alice, Gordon Hunt as Wally, Chris Elliott as Dogbert and Larry Miller as the evil boss) give it their best shot, the show suffers from listless writing and an overall lack of zip. Oh, there's plenty of 'toon violence (looting and pillaging by workers on the warpath, decapitations by a fierce warrior princess engineer known as "Lena"), but it lacks the satirical, anarchic edge of your basic "Itchy and Scratchy." All of the satire, in fact, falls disappointingly flat. "The Simpsons" does a better job of trashing management, marketing and the excesses of American capitalism, which is supposedly Adams' turf. "Dilbert" is the rare workplace sitcom, though, that's exclusively about work -- no larger world, no inner lives. "Dilbert" is concerned only with the work self, with the way people become their jobs. When you think about it, "Dilbert," both strip and sitcom, is an incredible bummer, sprouting from a desperation and sadness that's too deep and wide to even contemplate. Sure, a lot of people can relate to it, but that doesn't make it any less depressing. Adams has turned hating your job -- and by extension, yourself -- into a cult, a way of life, an industry. Nice work if you can get it. If there's one thing more tedious than people who hate their jobs too much it's people who love their jobs too much. We all know them -- workaholics who simply cannot disconnect from their work selves for one minute or else they'll turn to dust and blow away. Watching ABC's busy, pushy "Sports Night," the critic's darling of the new season, is like being stuck in an elevator with a hoard of them, all barking orders into their cell phones. I'm not positive about this, but I think "Sports Night" could give you a stroke. Or, at the very least, heartburn. N E X T_P A G E _| Let's go to the videotape - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Become a Salon member. Click here.