Benjamin McKenzie, the charismatic star of Fox’s new prime-time soap, “The O.C.,” isn’t under any illusions about what he’s getting into.

“We’re not doing Chekhov or Ibsen,” he told reporters last month in Hollywood. “This is a drama on Fox.”

Duly noted.

But don’t toss away your Cliff Notes just yet.

In “The O.C.,” which premieres Tuesday, McKenzie plays a troubled teen from a horrific home who’s nevertheless well-spoken and upstanding. He also seems better equipped to deal with the world than most of the pampered high schoolers he gets to know when his do-gooder lawyer takes him home to a Newport Beach mansion in California’s Orange County.

In other words, McKenzie may look like Russell Crowe’s younger brother – while playing nearly a decade below his own age – but for all the James Dean comparisons being bandied about, he’s a character straight out of Dickens: a little bit Pip, a little bit David Copperfield.

So, too, is Marissa Cooper (Mischa Barton), the achingly beautiful rich girl next door, whose father (Tate Donovan) is experiencing one of those plot-advancing financial reversals of which Dickens was so fond.

And if Charles Dickens were alive today, who’s to say he wouldn’t be writing a prime-time soap for Fox?

Dickens being unavailable, the storyteller behind “The O.C.” is Josh Schwartz, a 26-year-old Fox claims is “the youngest person ever to create his own one-hour drama for network television.”

He’ll need all that under-30 energy to keep the pot boiling on “The O.C.,” for which Fox envisions a “Beverly Hills, 90210”-like run, starting with a premiere aimed at beating the fall rush and building some momentum before the show disappears from the schedule during the baseball playoffs. Assuming it survives the move to Thursdays during November sweeps, there’s talk of making more than the usual 22 episodes a season.

That’s the kind of schedule that Dickens, who was responsible for clearing a few forests in his time, would have understood.

I’m not sure what it means, though, for Peter Gallagher, who plays Sandy Cohen, Ryan’s lawyer and benefactor.

“I was this kid. If someone hadn’t helped me, I wouldn’t be here,” he tells his wife (Kelly Rowan) in next week’s episode, setting the stage for the kind of father-son dynamic that tends to get lost, along with most of a show’s adult players, once a Fox teen soap gets a full head of steam.

Taking a page from the WB, which uses its teen dramas to push music (or maybe it’s the other way around), Fox has an agreement with AOL to showcase the songs used on the series in an area on the online service where users can also, naturally, chat about the show. There are also plans to premiere a new music video during each week’s episode.

And if all these synergistic frills serve to mask how old-fashioned, and even sweet, this show essentially is, well, a viewer-hungry Fox probably won’t mind a bit.

You can reach Ellen Gray by e-mail at elgrayphillynews.com, by fax at 215-854-5852 or by mail at the Philadelphia Daily News, Box 7788, Philadelphia, PA 19101.

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