(SMW) - ABC's "Empire," a five-week series about the falling glory of Rome, has swords, togas, stunning cinematography, some terrific acting and an aching, overall dullness.

Comedy Central's "Stella" has a cheap look, three guys who never change their suits, some near-infantile humor, general insanity, and is brilliantly entertaining.

Which just goes to show that in TV, like in so much else, it's not the size, it's the execution. And the writing.

Both series start Tuesday and both are good fits for summer, but for just about opposite reasons.

"Empire" is, in a way, classic summer TV: OK, but not great. Easy to miss, but not awful to watch if you have nothing better to do. I know, not much of a recommendation.

The six-hour series is expansive in its scope and lavish in its production, costing reportedly $30 million and shot in ancient sites around Italy. But it always feels small.

Part of the reason is that it has a television, rather than feature-film look, with the faces all smooth and uninteresting, and with the edges rounded off of scenes. When Julius Caesar (Colm Feore) returns from the battles in Spain early on, he looks like an advertising executive home from the office. You half expect him to be carrying a briefcase.

This is all happening in 44 B.C., and I don't think we're giving anything away to say that Caesar gets murdered by what amounts to the entire Roman Senate.

What follows is the subject of "Empire," and it's a mix of history and fiction and B-grade storytelling. A slave - fictitious - named Tyrannus (Jonathan Cake), who is also Rome's greatest gladiator, is freed by Caesar - uh, yeah, before he's murdered - and asked to protect Caesar's 18-year-old nephew Octavius (Santiago Cabrera), who is Caesar's heir to rule Rome.

Octavius - real - is spoiled, unprepared, and, frankly, something of a whiner. The Senate is out to kill him, too, and Tyrannus must both protect him and, according to Caesar's dying wish, "teach him how to rule," which seems like a lot to ask of a man who was a slave his whole life.

Nonetheless, we're off on another master Jedi-junior Padawan adventure, and they get help from a vestal virgin (Emily Blunt), who's added into the story seemingly so it's not just a bunch of boys running around with swords.

Still, mostly it is. The direction is at times excruciatingly pokey - Caesar is murdered in super slo-mo while New Age music wails in the background - and at times inconsistent. They seem to jump around the empire, going from town to Rome to countryside in a few steps.

Having said all that, you could do worse with summer TV. And the countryside does look spectacular.

On the other hand, Comedy Central's "Stella" is great summer television because this is the perfect time to be brainless, and I'm talking smart, inspired brainless.

There's no easy way to describe this show, though "wacko" is not a bad start. It's sort of a sitcom - but only sort of - with one story playing out over the half-hour through a series of absurdist, borderline-insane scenes that rarely make sense but are very funny.

The three stars - Michael Ian Black, Michael Showalter and David Wain - always wear suits and are some hybrid of the Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges and Looney Tunes characters. They live in a world populated by off-kilter innocents, none of whom notice that our heroes are idiots.

In the opener, they are evicted, try to buy a $3 million Manhattan co-op, win over the co-op board with a "Flashdance"-like performance while wearing large skunk tails - they're not dressed as skunks, they insist, they're dressed as "skunk people" - and go on to perform impromptu heart surgery on their landlord as potential renters wait and weep. It makes even less sense when you watch it, but it's way funnier.

The guys were part of a larger group called the State that created a short-lived but bizarre sketch comedy show for MTV in 1995; then in 1997, the three started a weekly nightclub show that became one of New York's hot spots for alternative comedy.

They called it "Stella" because the woman who booked them was planning to name her baby girl Stella, and as the guys tell it, it sounded classy and they are anything but. Eventually, "Stella" also became the name of the troop.

If the show "Stella" is not classy, it is a delicious parade of sight gags, cheekiness, incongruities, inane exchanges and silliness of the highest intelligence, and that is a ringing recommendation.

(Distributed by Scripps-McClatchy Western Service, http://www.shns.com.)