VH1's controversial Music Behind Bars premieres tomorrow at 10 p.m., sure to get more viewers than it might have because victims'-rights groups have made a fuss.

They say, "It totally glamorizes felons." It doesn't.

Each week, in a half-hour documentary, producers go into prisons to examine the role of music. Victims'-rights groups say the shows "glorify" inmates. They don't.

The first episode takes place in Graterford Prison in Montgomery County. It shows how the members of one band scuffle to rehearse and stage a concert for fellow inmates. Randomly locked down, their practices cut short for no apparent reason, worried that they'll be banned from the band if they mess up, they are anything but glorified.

"If you produce, you're a valuable commodity," says Troy (five to 20 years for robbery), the lead singer. "Otherwise, you're out."

Many of them - scraggly, tattooed and snaggle-toothed - are anything but glamorous.

One, a burglar called Hartwick, talks about how he spent a year in solitary confinement and how playing music helps keep him level. "I'm crazy. I snap out," he says. "You don't know how much hate I got, man."

There are four bands at Graterford, where music is just one of the diversions. Prison superintendent Donald Vaughn explains: "It's dangerous for inmates to become bored. Negative things go through their minds. They become violent."

Two of the band members are doing life for murder. One, Buli, seems as if he could do it again. "I'm kind of known to have a little bit of temper," he says.

The other, Mike, seems sort of shell-shocked. He says he regrets what he did: "I think about it all the time."

It's not hard to imagine why friends and relatives of victims would be angry that these criminals show up on TV. Unreasonably, television appearances have become one of the brass rings in America. People who pop up for two seconds behind Al Roker on Today or on a Jerry Springer segment are treated as heroes back home because many viewers cannot see what's right there in front of them - that the new, 10-minute "celebrities" have debased themselves for their "fame."

People who complain that Music Behind Bars uses criminals to provide entertainment also are not seeing clearly.

The show is not entertaining. It is enlightening. As television often does, it takes us places where we wouldn't normally go. Next week's episode focuses on a crack-selling mother, a singer in the usually off-key choir at the New Hampshire State Prison for Women, as she goes up for parole. Future episodes go to Kentucky, California, West Virginia, Maine, the Northern State Prison in Newark, N.J., and Waynesburg Prison in Pennsylvania.

Citing the series, Pennsylvania Gov. Schweiker on Tuesday said that crime victims should not be "caught off-guard by turning on their televisions and unexpectedly seeing the inmate who has caused them so much pain." He ordered that the Office of the Victim Advocate be consulted whenever the media enter a prison to cover correctional programs. That move followed last week's state House of Representatives resolution calling on VH1 to donate profits from the series to a fund for survivors. The channel had no comment.

The documentaries are cursory, perhaps because they're on a music channel, rather than, say, PBS. Hints of prison racism in tonight's show about a heavy-metal band beg to be developed further.

But Music Behind Bars shows fact, not fiction, depicting, at least a little, what life is like in prison.

Maybe viewers will feel sympathy when they see that inmates are people, too.

Or maybe there will be a public outcry to toughen things up when a few hundred thousand people see that some Graterford inmates have TVs and stereos in their cells.

Maybe victims'-rights groups should be defending the show, not attacking it.

From "Idol" to "Boston." American Idol's assault on the entertainment world continues.

The latest salvo comes in the form of Tamyra Gray, Idol's fourth-place finisher. She'll appear on several episodes of Fox's Boston Public beginning in February.

"While it's possible her character will sing, we are most interested in helping to launch her as a dramatic actress," executive producer Jason Katims said.