The hot button of a casual embrace

CHRISTINE Campbell (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), the attractive but bumbling title character of CBS' "The New Adventures of Old Christine," and Daniel Harris (Blair Underwood), who teaches a predominantly white fourth grade, eye each other hungrily when they meet at the posh private school. But the two divorces fear that just going out on a date will invite disapproval and scorn and may even cause Daniel to lose his job.

The problem for the potential lovebirds has nothing to do with Christine being white and Daniel being black. Their barrier is a policy prohibiting teachers from dating parents. That they would be an interracial couple is basically a nonissue.

Or, as one of the mothers of a student in Mr. Harris' class exclaims when she first spots the handsome new teacher, "Who knew diversity could be so gorgeous?"

The plight of Christine and Daniel is just one example of a flurry of interracial and interethnic relationships that have quietly developed in prime time during the last few seasons. Similar relationships on TV and film, particularly between blacks and whites, often touched off controversy or met resistance in past decades. But in recent seasons, with little or no fanfare, mixed couples have popped up on programs as disparate as "House," "Lost," "The L Word," "Boston Legal," "My Name Is Earl," "Men in Trees" and "Desperate Housewives."

NBC's "Heroes," about a group of ordinary people who discover they have superpowers, has at least three interracial relationships, including a troubled mom (Ali Larter) with a double personality who clashes with her estranged prison escapee husband (Leonard Roberts). On "Grey's Anatomy," Isaiah Washington's and Sandra Oh's characters are engaged, and T.R. Knight's and Sara Ramirez's characters recently eloped. FX's "Nip/Tuck" featured Sanaa Lathan as a woman caught between two white men: her rich tycoon husband (Larry Hagman) and the plastic surgeon Christian Troy (Julian McMahon) treating him. On HBO's racially charged "The Wire," a Baltimore police major (Lance Reddick) hooked up with an assistant state attorney (Deidre Lovejoy) following the collapse of his marriage to a black woman.