THEY are perky, pretty and primed to kick butt on local television.

Meet the Singapore teen version of Charlie's Angels, R.E.M - The Next Generation.

The title stands for Roxy, Elle and M and it is the teen version of Kids Central's original series, We Are R.E.M, which had three successful seasons six years ago.

Playing the spunky local girl detectives are Ming Bridges as Roxy, Jamie-Lee Frankland as Elle and Jerilyn Tiffany Koh as M.

The show is aired on Kids Central on Sundays, at 11.30am.

It is a departure for the programming belt that usually focuses on children in the 4 to 12 age group.

The station's spokesman told The New Paper that as Kids and Arts Central become a full channel by the end of the year, it is rebranding itself for a youthful audience.

It will have a new line-up of locally produced shows targeted at teens and tweens.

And they are kicking it off with R.E.M, hoping to turn this trio of pretty young things into local teen icons.

The girls play secondary school students who form a crime-fighting trio.

The New Paper spoke with the new TV girl sleuths who liked the idea of being compared to Charlie's Angels.

Mind you they are not referring to the original 1976 television series that starred Kate Jackson, Farah Fawcett and Jaclyn Smith.

Instead, it is the 2000 Cameron Diaz-Lucy Liu-Drew Barrymore movie version that they know and love.

Jamie-Lee compared her character to the Diaz's role in the movie.

Said the 18-year-old part-time model: 'I think my character Elle would be like Cameron Diaz's character in Charlie's Angels.

'She is a bit ditzy as she is a former child star who is very used to having people do things for her - a bit of a diva.'

The girls were also comfortable with the idea of being turned into role models for local teens.

Ming, a 15-year-old actress of British-Chinese descent, doesn't feel the pressure to live up to expectations.

'It feels good that people want to see us as role models,' she said.

All three girls have impressive resumes with Jerilyn, 17, having the most television experience.

She was part of the Kids Central's show called Wushu Warriors, playing a mystery-solving young woman with a flying kick.

She has also appeared in eight short films produced by the New York Film Academy Summer School's graduating young filmmakers.

She graduated from the Overseas Family School and plans to go to New York to study acting.

Jamie-Lee, who is doing her diploma in mass communications at a private school, was one of the suitcase girls on Channel 5's game show, Deal or No Deal, and Ming, a Tanglin Trust student, is an aspiring singer with a Christmas album under her belt.

The show's director, Mr Aaron Tan, 30, from Big Communications, a local television production company that was commissioned to produce the series, told The New Paper that he based the show on the original Charlie's Angels series.

Said Mr Tan: 'The original Charlie's Angels is the mother of female power trio drama.

'I would call R.E.M the tween/teen version of that, with three smart and good-looking heroines who can kick butt.'

The drama also departs from the usual vanilla themes that populate children's shows.

The producers are playing around with dark plotlines of murder and kidnapping to hook the teen viewer.

For instance, in upcoming episodes, the trio's families get death threats and they find a blood-soaked woman alive in a rubbish dump.

While it may sound violent for a youth-targeted show, Jerilyn thought it would go down well for the show's target audience.

She said: 'We really enjoyed shooting it. We didn't find it creepy or scary.

'I think the dark themes will appeal to the older crowd.'

Mr Tan, who has never produced a children's programme before, said he wanted to push the envelope with the plotlines.

'Kids today are pretty sophisticated and I decided to do it like an adult drama,' he said.

Kids Central, he added, gave them the creative freedom to do this.

'With R.E.M, we were allowed more creative leeway to explore more mature themes that we felt would attract the tween and teen group.

UNIVERSAL APPEAL

'Having said that, I also wanted it to be entertaining for adults who tune in, because I believe that a good (kids) show should have universal appeal.'

At the same time, he added they are not neglecting to put in children-friendly themes and the moral of teamwork, friendship and how crime does not pay.

'We are injecting it in a very subtle way in the plot but keeping it real at the same time,' he said

The market for this age group is sizable.

The 2006 Disney made-for-TV movie, High School Musical, about high school students living their dream, had over 100 million viewers worldwide.

The movie and the subsequent sequel spawned a merchandising industry of DVDs, soundtracks, books, video games, a concert tour and ice shows.

Local youth-targeted shows have also done consistently well.

The original R.E.M series, which was school-based and more for younger children, has been in the top 10 English programmes in Singapore.

In 2003, Singapore's Brainiest Kids - in which smart children answered general knowledge questions to win $10,000 and a trip to Tokyo - had more than 350,000 viewers.

The talent contest show, Campus Superstar, in 2006 - a spin-off from Project Superstar - hit more than 1.6 million viewers.

Mr Tan thinks R.E.M will appeal to the local tween and teen market just as successfully.

He said: 'At the end of the day, this is an all-Singapore cast, with three good looking heroines... and it caters to our Singaporean sensibilities.'

This article was first published in The New Paper on May 24, 2008.