ABC is taking this extreme-makeover thing to the extreme.

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition returns tonight with a two-hour instalment, starting at 7 p.m. Then at 10 p.m., simulcast on Global, there's the debut of Extreme Makeover: TV-Pilot Edition -- a.k.a. Brothers & Sisters.

The episode of Calista Flockhart's new drama that will be beamed to you in living colour tonight only marginally resembles the pilot episode that was distributed to Canadian TV critics earlier this year.

About a third of the actors were recast -- most notably, Calista's mom went from being Betty Buckley to the more physically believable Sally Field.

Obviously, someone at ABC took a long look at the pilot and decided the project needed some drastic changes. Usually, that's a horrible sign, but with Brothers & Sisters it's too early to tell.

The new version definitely is easier to follow than the original pilot, which threw all of the characters at you in a frenzied and confusing opening 10 minutes.

Flockhart stars as Kitty Walker, a right-wing radio host in New York who gets lured back to Los Angeles to interview for a TV gig that she initially is sure she doesn't want.

To her great surprise, Kitty finds herself intrigued by the TV job. The complication is that the bulk of her family is in L.A., including her estranged mom (Field), her dad (Tom Skerritt), her sister (Rachel Griffiths) and an assortment of brothers that we have trouble keeping straight (one of them is gay, actually, but the pun is unintentional).

Without ruining anything, a substantial event occurs at the very end of the episode tonight which occurred fairly early in the original pilot.

Thus, the focus of the two shows is decidedly different.

Also, the show tonight includes far more scenes and storylines for Griffiths, who you'll recall as the most screwy of many screwy characters on Six Feet Under.

One funny scene that survived both the original and the altered versions of Brothers & Sisters has Flockhart's character accusing one of her male siblings of being too skinny. You find yourself waiting for the zinger directed back at the notoriously bone-thin Flockhart, but apparently the exchange is not being played for laughs.

As a quasi-whiny but quasi-intriguing adult drama directed at the Ally McBeal/Desperate Housewives/Grey's Anatomy crowd, Brothers & Sisters definitely has the potential to succeed, as long as it doesn't get too overwrought.

ABC has placed Brothers & Sisters in the attractive timeslot that made Grey's Anatomy such a hit. Brothers & Sisters follows Desperate Housewives (which returns tonight at 9 p.m.), with Grey's Anatomy moved to Thursdays to try to take a bite out of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation on CBS.

In Canada, Desperate Housewives is on CTV while Global has Brothers & Sisters. CTV has placed the NBC-produced Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip opposite Brothers & Sisters in Canada but, honestly, Studio 60 seems like more of a Tuesday-at-9 kind of show than a Sunday-at-10 kind of show.

Regardless, if you used to watch Grey's Anatomy before hitting the sack on Sunday nights, there's a good chance you'll warm to Brothers & Sisters in the same slot.

Extreme makeover or not, ABC is banking on extremely high ratings.