Fortunately we have this thing called cable now, which has given actresses like Close and Hunter a place where we can adore them every week. On back-to-back nights this week, both women arrive with TV shows built entirely around them. First up is Hunter’s new drama series, “Saving Grace,” premiering Monday on TNT, in which she stars as a boozing, promiscuous Oklahoma City detective who gets some spiritual counseling in the form of a country-hick angel named Earl. (Ever notice how country hicks on television are always named Earl?) On Tuesday night, Close stars in FX’s new series “Damages,” about a relentless class-action lawyer whose sense of good and evil is more than a little complicated. The two programs are both dynamite vehicles for their leading ladies, though, at least in the case of “Saving Grace,” it’d be nice if it were a better show.
Like almost every other drama on FX, “Damages” is fast, tawdry and almost completely implausible, and that’s not meant as a knock. More than any other cable network, maybe even including HBO, FX has established a clear brand identity: its shows are devilishly fun, too smart to be trashy, but with a proudly black heart. “Damages” opens with a pretty girl in her underwear, dotted with blood, stumbling dazed into the street outside a ritzy New York apartment building, leaving behind her a dead body. The girl is an idealistic young lawyer named Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne) who, six months earlier, had been hired by Close’s character, power-lawyer Patty Hewes, to help take down an Enron-ish tycoon (played with glorious ooze by Ted Danson). The dead body is Ellen’s fiancé. What happened during those six months makes up the arc of the show, or at least the first season.
“Damages” doesn’t have an idea in its head—this isn’t the kind of show that bothers with literary annoyances like, eww, themes—but it sure is a blast to watch. And Close, who spends most of her time onscreen picking carcasses out of her teeth, is at her terrifying best. But this is a fleshy role for Close, not just a chance to sneer at people. Her Patty is the biggest shark in a tank full of them, but she can be warm, even vulnerable, when the moment requires, making it anyone’s guess whose side she’s really on. But it’s probably not Ellen’s.
TNT’s “Saving Grace” is like two shows mashed together, and only one of them is any good. At times, it’s a character study of an imbalanced woman careening toward disaster. And the beauty of Hunter’s performance—which some critics have argued is a bit too imbalanced—is that she doesn’t run from her age. She is too old for this junk, and Hunter plays Grace with notes of dark desperation. Unfortunately, the other show stuck inside “Saving Grace” seems like a nod to TNT’s red-state audience. Whereas FX is a big-city, blue-state network, TNT’s biggest hit, “The Closer,” stars Kyra Sedgwick with a southern accent so thick it’s a running joke on the show. And TNT’s other new series this summer, a medical drama starring Treat Williams, is called “Heartland.” Enough said.
Grace is an FX character, not a TNT one. That’s probably why the network has grafted onto Hunter’s show a wince-inducing storyline in which Grace is visited by an angel after killing a man in a drunk-driving accident. Earl erases the accident and tells Grace she’s got one last chance. She is, naturally, skeptical. The resulting show is a tug of war between good Grace and bad Grace, with a tedious police procedural tacked on to keep the plot moving along. This “Joan of Arcadia”-style gimmick might be smart business for TNT—you can almost imagine the network note that inspired it—but maybe not. Fans of Hunter’s breakneck performance might roll their eyes at Earl. And viewers who warm to the show’s spirituality might be turned off by all of Grace’s drinking, cursing and screwing.
“Saving Grace” is not a proselytizing show, thank God. But it’s still disappointing television. Tonally, Earl’s goofy, homespun presence clangs loudly against the rawness of Grace’s life. A better show would find a way for her to confront her self-destructiveness without resorting to divine intervention. It also steals away a golden opportunity for Hunter to do what she does best: act.
