Chris Rock was already a successful comedian when he realized how lucky he was.

He'd had a childhood that was both funny and unusual. In show business, that's gold.

"Everybody Hates Chris" — making its debut today on UPN, takes advantage of that. It's drawn a strong buzz and is based loosely on Rock's childhood in New York.

"I just thought everybody lived around abandoned buildings and crackheads," Rock says. "I lived in the ghetto until I was like 19. I came to (Los Angeles) ... stayed at hotels and stuff. When I got back and I saw what my neighborhood looked like, I started getting scared."

Others are from tough neighborhoods, but Rock also had the contradiction factor: "I grew up in a very loving, two-parent household in the middle of one of the worst ghettos in New York City."

That helps make for distinctive comedy. "Everybody Hates Chris" even looks different. It's set in the early 1980s and it's filmed on a studio lot — "Wonder Years" fashion — with Rock as narrator.

Critics have embraced it. In one poll (by trade publication Broadcasting & Cable), it was picked as the season's best new show. Only Fox, it seems, had its doubts.

The original script was ordered by Fox, which hesitated. Meanwhile, a copy drifted to UPN entertainment president Dawn Ostroff.

"We hunted Chris down," she says. "I got his cell phone, I got his e-mail address."

Rock says he was happy about the attention. "You want to work with people who are excited."

Still, the unexcited Fox had rights until December of 2004. "We waited quietly for the option to expire," Ostroff says. "And then we wound up taking over the project."

The show skips TV traditions. Even when he was little, Rock says, he found them all too predictable. "I (could) see these plots a mile away. And I was 7."

One cliche being avoided is the dad as helpless bumbler. "With the exception of Cosby, every black father I see on TV, they're not really masculine," Rock says.

This dad, Julius, is solid, holding two jobs.

That's a lot like Rock's real-life dad. It's also like the father of Terry Crews, who plays him.

"I really identified with this guy," Crews says. "This guy is my father, to be honest."

Crews grew up in Flint, Mich., an auto town with tough athletes. He played defensive end for Western Michigan University and moved around in the pros. "In seven years in the NFL, I played on six different teams."

He was also an artist who became an actor. He shot "The Longest Yard" with Rock, and they became friends.

"HE SAID TO ME, 'HEY, I GOT SOMETHING FOR YOU.' "

That was the role of the diligent dad in "Everybody Hates Chris." It neatly fits Crews, who has been married 16 years and has five kids.

He and Tichina Arnold (of "Martin") play the parents. Tyler James Williams, 13, plays the young Chris; Tequan Richmond and Imani Hakim play his younger brother and sister.

In real life, Rock grew up in a family with seven kids.

"I changed it just enough so I couldn't get sued by my family," he jokes.

Actually, the family has been benign. "My family's reaction is none, really. ... I'm sure people are like, 'Hey, another check. Good. Good.' "

His parents were passionate about education. Deciding that schools in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood where he grew up weren't good enough, they sent him on long bus rides to another part of town.

It was "mostly Italians and Irish," Rock says. "They would beat me and the Jews up."

He was the outsider, and that's a springboard for humor.

"If you listen to his comedy ... it's serious stuff," says Ali LeRoi, who created the show with Rock. "There's war, there's racism, there's fights, there's violence, there's arguments. And then you find the joke in it."