'Celebrity Autobiography: In Their Own Words' When: 10 p.m. Thursday, Bravo. Starring: Fred Willard. 'DaVinci's Inquest' When: 2:30 a.m. Sunday, WPXI; midnight and 3 p.m. weekdays and 8 to 10 p.m. Tuesday on WGN. Starring: Nicholas Campbell.

Skewering the egos of celebrities never grows old as Bravo's "Celebrity Autobiography: In Their Own Words" (10 p.m. Thursday) proves in an amusing fashion.

The concept of this one-hour special is blissfully simple: Get a bunch of comedians who know a thing to two about comic timing to read from celebrity autobiographies and, presto, instant laughs.

Jay Mohr reads from a profane passage in David Cassidy's "C'mon, Get Happy," in which Cassidy describes an intimate encounter with his TV sister from "The Partridge Family," Susan Dey.

"But Susan lacked that slutty aspect of a female that I found so attractive," Mohr reads, proving shame and embarrassment have no place in a celebrity tell-all.

A preview tape was riddled with profanity and sexual innuendo (especially in 1991 Carnegie Mellon University grad Jack Plotnick's reading from Tommy Lee's "Tommyland"), some of which will have to be bleeped out before the show airs.

The funniest sketch features dueling autobiographies from Loni Anderson (read by Cheryl Hines, "Curb Your Enthusiasm"), Burt Reynolds (Fred Willard) and former Reynolds assistant Elaine Blake Hall (Andrea Martin).

"He was sweet and tentative and gentle almost," Anderson writes of her first sexual encounter with Reynolds, "as though he thought I was going to break."

Reynolds recalls it differently: "During the non-stop animal passion ..."

Though for mature audiences only, "In Their Own Words" is a hoot.

'DaVinci's Inquest'

We should have seen it coming.

The 2000 premiere of CBS's "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" was preceded two years earlier by the Canadian show "DaVinci's Inquest," a similarly-themed crime drama.

Based on cases investigated by the real-life Larry Campbell, a one-time coroner-turned-mayor of Vancouver, this one-hour drama stars Nicholas Campbell as Dominic DaVinci, a former homicide detective who now works with cops and pathologists to investigate murders.

The series premiered in September in America, airing both on local station WPXI (2:30 a.m. Sunday) and on cable superstation WGN (midnight and 3 p.m. weekdays and 8 to 10 p.m. Tuesday). It's not as gruesome as "CSI," but some of the content is coarse as DaVinci's tasks include tracking down husband-and-wife serial rapists/killers and convening a Coroner's Court to investigate a politically-charged police shooting.

I've watched four non-sequential episodes and there's usually a plot thread that makes no sense, so the show must have some continuing story elements that will be lost on viewers who only drop in occasionally. But that frustration pales next to the fun of watching series star Campbell, who's an extremely natural actor. He makes dialogue sound like real-life conversation, even hemming and hawing a little like Peter Falk in "Columbo."

If Canada's ability to start a trend extends from TV to, oh, say, my favorite Canadian food product ? Rolo candy-flavored chocolate-caramel milk ? then that delicacy should hit this side of the border any day.