Crime drama remains a basic American fantasy, a spin-off from the Western.

Pick a night, any night, and before the sun has set into the fabled San Diego sky, the television tube comes alive with treachery, murder, vengeance, petty greed, grand larceny, struggles for power, struggles for survival — all of which comes under the label of crime in the street. To the accompaniment of dazzling intros — S.W.A.T. has a montage that begins with one super-cop tearing around a comer, another catapulting over a fence, a third jumping through a window, a fourth dancing down the side of a building with the aid of a rope, and the last, like Superman, hurling himself into space — the chase is on. Cops and Robbers. A kid’s game. But for millions of television viewers, these programs, which are often campy, frequently banal, sometimes surrealistic, provide both distraction and satisfaction.

Most of our daily lives become filled with minor frustrations and attrition. Why do we then, seek and find alleviation from personal pain in the staccato blinking of the red eye of the police car, or the howling of the siren that signals the pursuit of prey? Is it, as Aristotle once suggested, that these programs of the hunter and hunted act as catharsis that purge us of pity and terror? Or do they represent the last American frontier in which the bad guy always gets his due and the American values of justice and punishment are reaffirmed?

Whether the mass media conditioned the public to cops and robbers, or whether it catered to the needs of the audience, remains a moot point. More than likely, the two conjoined. Cops and robbers remains a basic American fantasy, a spin-off from the Western in which at high noon, under a searing desert sun, the good sheriff and the bad gunman would shoot it out. This simple minded formula of justice and morality has now been transposed to the urban night sky, where, with the aid of sophisticated technological gimmickry and native mother wit, the cops always prevail.

To illustrate the pervasiveness of cops and robbers programs, consider the offerings, on Monday night, an off-night. That is, the major networks offer situation comedies (Maude and Rhoda, channels 2 and 8) or the Monday night movie (10 and 4) at prime time, 9-10 p.m. Nevertheless, if you’d like to watch either a vicious psychopath or an ordinary anti-social miscreant getting his or her lumps, here is your bill of fare:

6 p.m. Ironside (9) Justice in a wheelchair. Raymond Burr using his wits and a female secretary/factotum, plus one black and one white assistant to do the leg work.

6:30 p.m. Dragnet (13) Jack Webb in brush hair-do, looking and sounding like Haldeman before Watergate.

7 p.m. Mod Squad (6) A trio of post adolescents making like public defenders, complete with late 1960’s hippie disguises.

7 p.m. F.B.I. (13) Efrem Zimbalist Jr. shedding patina on the grand-daddy of legitimized open season hunting.

8 p.m. Rookies (39 and 7) Same format as Adam-12 (Tuesdays, 10 and 4). Short-haired cops chasing medium to long haired villains — but none are chained to their cars.

9 p.m. S.W.A.T. (39 and 7) This one wins the uglies award without contest. Gratuitous violence based on the assumption that the more you hit people, the more you hit at crime. S.W.A.T. is the unit called by the police when they are in trouble. Trouble? With those cryptofascists around, you’re not kidding!

10 p.m. Caribe (39 and 7) Since Stacy Reach scored as the good cop in The Centurions, they whisked him off to the Caribbean where he could stake out beneath the sheltering palms.

10 p.m. Get Smart (13) Don Adams as the ubiquitous, not-too-bright agent.

11:30 Perry Mason (6) Raymond Burr when he was still walking. Hot court room scenes.

11:30 Madigan (8 and 2); Wide World of Mystery (7).

And so to bed.

If a viewer takes a half hour off at 11 to watch the news, he or she can watch cops and robbers continuously from dinner at 6 to bedtime at 12:30. Or, if the British may be allowed their fine contribution to the genre, The Defenders, with the slinky Diana Rigg and the suave Patrick Macnee (9) starts at 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, and provides 7 uninterrupted hours of Cops and Robbers.

Nor is Monday atypical. Friday night, which once boasted Love, American Style, as its biggie, now has two policewomen competing for prime time: Police Woman (10 and 4) and Get Christie Love (39 and 7), not to mention Rockford Files which shows up an hour earlier at 9. Sunday, of course, has Kojak in one comer at 8:30 p.m., and either Columbo, MacMillan and Wife, or McCloud at the same time, in the other. Now that the voice of the rerun is heard in the land, should you bother with any of these? The following guide may possibly prove helpful.

Baretta Tuesday, 10 p.m. (39 and 7). Robert Blake, an engaging actor.plays a mildly engaging New York cop. In the first episode his girl friend is murdered. This allows him the eccentricity of being sensual with his pet cockatoo, with whom he inhabits a dismal hotel room. Baretta was based on last year’s Toma, hence the reliance on disguises and encounters with low-life characters. Scripts are weak and uneven, but Robert Blake, himself a reformed juvenile delinquent, makes the T.V. character almost work by playing himself undisguised.

Cannon, Wednesday, 9 p.m. (8 and 2). As a private investigator with unassailable moral integrity, William Conrad’s most potent weapon proves to be his stomach. Though confronted with killers who make the young Richard Widmark appear as a boy scout, Conrad outwits them by bumping them with his protruding gut. The endings invariably defy credulity. Cannon bears no weapons, but a helicopter rarely fails to materialize when he’s trapped on a Los Angeles barren mesa with his ruthless quarry. Whatever happened to the slim and sexy private eye?

Columbo. Every fourth Sunday, 8:30 p.m. (10 and 4). Along with millions of others, this is my undisputed favorite because of the absence of violence. Based on a format — the murderer commits his deed within the first five minutes and Columbo must deduce why and by whom — Peter Falk plays the character with stylized manners. That’s the beauty of Columbo. You can count on the scripts and on Falk. The murderer inevitably comes from the upper class, lives in a mansion, and grows thwarted in his or her desire to maintain position, status, power. Columbo, essentially domestic, basically gentle, always feels sorry when, by means of deduction, he closes in. The element of ambiguity towards the murderer raises the level of this program above the others. Catch Oskar Wemer in his first television performance as the man who kills his domineering mother-in-law. When Columbo says, “I’m really sorry you murdered her,” you really are. The elegant sets exist in contrast to the messy, if relentlessly logical, Columbo.

Get Christie Love Friday, 10 p.m., (39 and 7). Theresa Graves as a black police woman wears gorgeous clothes, has glamorous assignments that jet her to Europe, but she rarely convinces us that she is in danger. At the crucial moment, she and her white assistant whip out their trusty pistols and yell, “Freeze.” Though Christie Love comes on sexy, she’s never allowed any sex. Pity.

Harry O. Thursday, 10 p.m. (39 and 7). Originally filmed in San Diego, the program showed so little life that its locale had to be switched to Los Angeles. David Janssen plays a weary private detective wearily, and the scripts vary from unilateral simple mindedness to complications that are not resolved. Unless your local chauvinism demands that you see the San Diego harbor, use this program as a soporific only.

Kojak Sunday, 8:30 (8 and 2). Telly Savalas with his cutesy prop — a lollypop — his cold eyes, and his phallic head. Allegedly shot in New York, it is produced in Los Angeles, hence all the -night scenes, where the streets come across in a blur of reddish neon lights. If you can take some cruelty, lots of noise, and Telly Savalas imitating a just and loyal man, try Kojak. As for myself, I half expect Savalas to make some obscene gesture that will give himself away.

The wrinkle in this one is that Dennis Weaver, in cowboy hat and jacket lined in sheepskin, has been transported to New York to help out the regular police force. And ordinarily, they need all the help they can get. The imposition of Arizona on New York (and even Europe) provides the tension and laughs. Many powerful men hurl themselves out of windows.

MacMillan and Wife. Alternate Sunday (with McCloud and Columbo) 8:30 (10 and 4). Remember the formula for The Thin Man? A debonaire detective solving crimes with the help of his attractive wife? Rock Hudson is no William Powell, but he makes a reasonably personable commissioner, and while Susan St. James will never take the place of Myna Loy, logical inference frequently arrives in bed. Madame M., while often kittenish, neither cloys nor claws. \

Police Story. Tuesday, 10 p.m. (10 and 4). A variety of middle aged stars turn up as the investigator or cop of the week. A recent one, starring Lloyd Bridges, “The Return of Joe Forrester,” will serve as a spin-off for a separate series in the fall. Most of the cops in Police Story are a bit long in tooth to play romantic heroes, but there they are, hugging and kissing or dodging adoring women. Must be the power of the office. One of the better cops and robbers, showing the frailties of victims and victimizers.

Police Woman. Friday, 10 p.m. (10 and 4). Angie Dickinson, bearing the peppy name of Pepper, mingles with the female cons, and indeed in bearing, stance, and appearance, she’s hard to distinguish from the bad girls. With ratty hair, she slumps and cries, “I’m going to get... if it's the last thing I do.” Fresh? About 15 years ago, I sat opposite Earl Holliman in a local restaurant. I am happy to say that his looks and career have thrived. He outclasses everyone in Police Woman.

Rockford Files. Friday, 9 p.m. (10 and 4). James Garner lives in a trailer. He calls his Dad (Noah Berry Jr.) “Rocky". Father chews out son for getting beat up on his job. Son makes little bread, but kisses young girls paternally. Innocuous and often with unresolved endings, but the blood on Garner's cheeks proves as ritualistic as the chase.

Streets of San Francisco. Thursday, 9 p.m. (39 and 7). Filmed in the city for which it is named, with Karl Malden as the experienced, compassionate cop, and Michael Douglas as his young assistant. Plots often deal with frightening subjects — child beating, rape, mental disturbance — but the authenticity of the scripts can not be faulted. Try to catch the re-run of the homicidal transvestite. Excellently acted, even if the ending turned on a cliche.

Cops and Robbers anyone... ?