Side show

THEY'LL STILL BE THERE FOR YOU, WITH A NEW NAME: NBC has found the show it thinks will replace Friends as its blockbuster after the comedy ends next spring.

It's . . . well, a clone of Friends "with sex," the network says (with no explanation as to what this says about how Rachel became pregnant with Ross' child or if it means something is lacking in Chandler and Monica's marriage).

NBC is Americanizing a hit British show called Coupling, about a group of six thirtysomethings who are either intimately involved, were intimately involved or are looking to become intimately involved with each another.

Ben Silverman, whose production company is doing the remake, which will have the same title, tells the Hollywood Reporter that Coupling is very different from Friends but he and NBC think it would be a "perfect show for the fans of Friends."

AMERICAN DOLDRUMS: American Idol, the Fox show promising to give us the next big pop music star based in part on your vote, kicked off the main part of its competition Tuesday, and I'm still waiting to see how judge Simon Cowell got his Mr. Nasty label in the show's British version.

In critiquing performers over the past two weeks, Cowell, one of a three-judge panel that also will help pick the winner, has been brutally honest at worst. (The British music industry exec told one male singer Tuesday that his performance belonged in a karaoke bar in Chile; he was right.) And if that bothers you, remember:

The winner of this Star Search mutant will get a contract with a record label, which could end up pouring a few million dollars into someone you'll never hear of again.

People with a good voice and/or a good image who want to be famous are a penny a dozen.

Almost anyone trying for an entertainment career hears similar things or worse at least once a day.

And how many "singers" have you heard whom you wished had not only been told they belonged in a Chilean karaoke bar but had been exiled to one?

TREND REPORT: If American Idol is supposed to be a referendum on the state of popular music in the United States, the first round of 10 finalists showed that every female singer wants to be a Whitney Houston-Celine Dion hybrid who performs bombastic, headache-inducing ballads, and every male singer wants to be the R. Kelly of I Believe I Can Fly. (Presumably without Kelly's legal woes.)

Check out the next round of 10 on Tuesday.

STYLISH PILL POPPING: The designer-label obsessed woman of a certain age now has something new to accompany her designer wallet, designer key chain, designer pens, designer brush, designer perfume, designer makeup bag and designer makeup in her designer purse: a designer compact made to hold her (nondesigner) birth control pills.

Nicole Miller has created two limited-edition compacts in a deal with the maker of Ortho Tri-Cyclen. "Most women want to . . . express themselves through clothing and accessories, and now, even through stylish pill packaging," Miller says in a news release.

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