Entertainment

SPLIT-TOON

IF you were given the choice of having a split personality – and the two lives that go along with it – would you?

Could you?

That’s Christian Slater’s problem in NBC’s modern-day take on the “Jekyll & Hyde” archetype in their new thriller, “My Own Worst Enemy,” debuting tonight.

Slater plays Henry/Edward, the man with the voluntary split personality.Edward is an assassin at the headquarters of an outfit called Janus working for a woman called Mavis (Alfre Woodard). He’s also a chick magnet for giant fake-lipped spies.

Henry on the other hand is an efficiency expert who works for some corporation or other that is housed in the same building as the spy’s headquarters.

Henry is a family guy with a wife, a dog, kids, and a house in the suburbs. For some reason, he doesn’t think it’s weird that the corporation he works for has an on-site shrink (Saffron Burrows), who also. by the way, has giant lips.

Turns out that 19 years earlier, Edward volunteered to have part of his brain worked on so that he could live a dual existence with dual personalities to match. Henry, the efficiency expert doesn’t know the professional spy/killer exists, but the spy/killer knows the efficiency expert exists.

Got it? Good.

Anyway, everything is going great guns (literally) until Edward’s thoughts and memories start dribbling over into Henry’s life and vice-versa.

On the plus side, Edward makes a great lover for Henry’s in-the-dark wife, (Madchen Amick), who is so grateful for a great night in the sack that she makes him pancakes.

On the downside, when Henry begins to figure out what is going on, he gets mad at himself for making love to his own wife.

Like some 1960s cold war thriller, there are many Russians to kill and Ruskie female spies to bed and murder which means, I guess, viewers don’t like change.

At his job in the insurance company (or whatever the hell it is), Henry’s best friend is wiseass co-hort, Tom (Mike O’Malley) who, as it turns out, also has a second life as Raymond – a professional assassin and Edward’s sidekick in the killing game.

What I still don’t understand is why one guy had to have brain surgery and the other doesn’t seem to. Or why Henry must think he was in Akron at a convention on Tuesday and Wednesday instead of in Moscow killing people while Raymond/Tom knows and remembers everything.

The action is pretty non-stop, the stars terrific and, if you’re willing to do the work to follow the complicated plot, the show can be lots of fun.

You won’t mind the work if you love movies like “True Lies,” or shows like “Alias,” or “Heroes” (which the producers also worked on).

Best of all, “Worst Enemy” is a good break from so many bad new shows.

“My Own Worst Enemy”

Tonight at 10 on NBC