BY JOYCE MILLMAN | the 1996-97 TV season was a confusing and bruising one where shows came and went with head-spinning speed. The network axes fell on saplings like "EZ Streets" and "Prince Street" after just one or two episodes. There were long, momentum-crushing hiatuses for established dramas like "ER" and "NYPD Blue," and musical-chairs schedule changes for struggling series like "The Single Guy," "Roseanne" and "Lois and Clark." Even Fox, the network that never used to cancel anything, had an itchy trigger finger.

But as quickly as the casualties fell, other shows popped up to take their places. The assembly line never stopped running. And maybe that was the problem. This past season, there was just too much TV. Too many channels, too many choices, too much copycat programming, too much drone. It was overkill and, if the Nielsens can be trusted, viewers had reached their limit -- the broadcast networks' weekly ratings were at their lowest in years.

A show had to be really special to cut through the clutter. "Seinfeld," for one, looked more unique than ever this season, compared to all those interchangeable kooky-girl sitcoms NBC kept trying out; nothing else could duplicate "Seinfeld's" ability to pull off urban surrealism without looking foolish. Mainly, though, the season went by as a scattering of glinting fragments. "ER's" Gloria Reuben, the actress with the saddest eyes and most luminous smile on television. The stark raving satire of "The Simpsons" and "Larry Sanders." The episode about Hank's colon -- yes, his colon -- on "King of the Hill." "Relativity," when you could find it. "EZ Streets," and its soul-sick cops and mobsters.

But the show that registered most vividly this season, the one that got under your skin and burrowed into your memory, was NBC's "Homicide: Life on the Street" -- which is hardly news because "Homicide" has been the most consistently absorbing, fearless, entertaining and disturbing drama in prime time since its premiere in January 1993.

Sure, as a cop drama, "NYPD Blue" has gone over some of the same ground, but it doesn't have "Homicide's" dare-to-be-unlovable edge. Bad cop behavior is not a sweeps-only device on "Homicide." These Baltimore detectives are difficult bastards all year 'round. The show is steeped in hard-core irony, the dialogue is pretty damn fancy. If you're looking for sudsy uplift and the assurance that "warts and all, the system works," you're not going to find it here. But, then, "Homicide" is most comfortable when it's making you uncomfortable.

And this is territory into which only a handful of police procedurals -- Steven Bochco's prototypically fast and gritty "Hill Street Blues" and his brilliant bomb "Cop Rock"; PBS's "Prime Suspect," which shares "Homicide's" flat, functional, earth-toned palette and hand-held camera immediacy -- have ventured, because the risks are too high. But "Homicide" has managed to hang on despite mediocre ratings, without dumbing down or lightening up. By putting out the best written, best acted cop show week after week, producers Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana forced NBC to admit the obvious -- "Homicide" was just too good to be canceled. In a TV climate where literate, adult, feel-bad dramas have fallen off network schedules like ducks in a carnival shooting gallery, "Homicide" is the last show standing.