Get ready. It's starting.
The new U.S. TV season really gets under way on Sunday with the first episode of the heavily hyped Madam Secretary (CBS, Global, 8:30 p.m.). If you've watched any television in the past month, you're aware of it.
It's interesting, this one, but on the evidence of the pilot, it's no doozy of deep, compelling storytelling. Its middling quality raises the issue of where network TV is going in an era when cable has all the depth, zest and provocations. The provocation here is mild enough – a woman is installed as U.S. secretary of state and juggles family matters while taking charge of international crises.
CBS has stuck by The Good Wife in recent years and seen the show garner both critical praise and Emmy awards. If Madam Secretary is an attempt to launch a drama at The Good Wife level, it's going to need some injection of subtle sizzle – it needs to strut, be more cryptic and less glaringly obvious.
Things open with predictable rhythm. In some vaguely Middle Eastern country, two boys are being imprisoned. The first thing we hear is, "We have rights. Call the American embassy!" There's a reply in another language, which is helpfully translated as, "Don't be a fool, you're going to die here."
Then we meet the woman herself, the title character. Elizabeth McCord (Tea Leoni) is a university professor dealing with a difficult student, and she's a bit prickly with him. Then she meets up with her hubby Henry (Tim Daly), a fellow prof; we see that young female students love him, and she's a bit prickly with them. Over dinner with friends, McCord learns that the plane carrying the secretary of state has gone down over the Atlantic.
Then we see her home life. A farm. Two cute kids. Next thing, she's shovelling out the horse barn. Suddenly, half the White House shows up. The President (Keith Carradine) wants McCord as his new secretary of state – "I recruited you for the CIA. I trained you as an analyst. I trust you." Also, she has this "thinks outside the box" thing.
Then it's months later and Madam Secretary is negotiating the corridors of power. Meetings and stuff. Meetings about terrorists. Syria. Those kids we met in the opening – they'll be executed! Madam Secretary gets prickly with a few people.
A mysterious visitor enters with secret information. This could be the trigger for an ongoing conspiracy plot that raises Madam Secretary above the level of crisis-of-the-week drama. But it is awkwardly inserted. And then there's the matter of Madam Secretary's husband and his charms. Hmm – could be another ongoing plot development. It's hard to tell.
In another entirely predictable development, those imprisoned kids (in Syria, it turns out) must be saved. McCord says, "We can't afford a Black Hawk-down moment." Indeed. But first she must deal with the stylist imposed on her. This isn't exactly The West Wing unfolding here. Inevitably, McCord gets prickly with some more people, including the President. Somebody barks, "You better be right about this!" And McCord, all prickly, says, "No one misses Syria if it completely self-destructs!"
Right. Madam Secretary plods more than it sizzles and, right now, it is the waste of an opportunity. No one who has seen Homeland will easily accept the obviousness here. The first big new network drama is a pleasant time-waster. That's it.
The show also wastes Tea Leoni. She has sublime comedy chops, which aren't used here. Her finest TV hour was the wonderful Fox comedy Flying Blind, in which she played an acid-tongued ingenue who drove men mad. It had a lovely, dopey charm to it. There's no room for use of those comedy skills in Madam Secretary.
Also airing this weekend
PopFan (Saturday, Lifetime Canada, 8 p.m.) is a slight, silly but engaging riff on the movie Misery. Also, a look inside teen pop culture. The pop star is Ava (Chelsea Kane), a Disney-type idol who has gone rogue, doing videos in her lingerie and such, and fighting with her manager and family. She drives off into the country to write meaningful songs. Her car crashes and she's saved from death by a handsome young lug named Xavier (Nolan Gerard Funk), who takes care of her at his place. Yikes, wouldn't ya know it, he's an obsessive fan and Ava is in great danger. As an exercise in terror PopFan isn't up to much, but it oozes teen preoccupations and broods lightly on the meaning of celebrity. Directed by Vancouver actress/writer/director Vanessa Parise, it's deftly done ethereal drama.
The Mysteries of Laura (Saturday, Bravo, 10 p.m.) is a new NBC show that somehow landed on Bravo. It's bad. Debra Messing plays Laura, a cop preoccupied with bratty kids and a jerk of an ex-husband. It makes fighting crime a real chore. But she does it. "I'm just a mother with a shiny badge, a loaded gun and very little patience," Laura says at one point. One cliché after another here. It makes Madam Secretary look like a masterpiece.