TV is the New Reading

TNT series range from good to … odd

First -- well, this whole thing is going to be about TNT, more or less, so I’ll just start off with “Leverage.” The Timothy Hutton vehicle recently found former insurance investigator turned do-gooder griftmeister Nathan Ford and his band of Merry Men -- grifter, hitter, hacker and thief -- discover they are after the same quarry as a second band of scofflaws. But while Nathan et al. are trying to recover a valuable painting for a family victimized by the Nazis back in the day, their counterparts are in it for themselves.

From a nail-biting standoff with a bomb that put one of their number in a coffin (at least until she snuck out the false bottom), Nathan and his team square off against their opposites in some most entertaining ways. When the two thieves continue stealing things from each other and the two enforcers can’t decide whether to beat each other up or fall in love, the arthouse heist plays out in a magnificent spectacle of lasers, hacks and counter hacks, recovering the lost artwork, uncovering a huge secret and putting at least one ne’er-do-well behind bars.

Speaking of Merry Men and grifters of good conscience, the BBC America series “Robin Hood” returns this fall, beginning with an encore presentation of the heart-breaking second-season finale. If you missed it -- and even if you didn’t -- it’s well worth seeing again if only to make yourself very upset and wail against the injustice of it all. In terms of special effects, Steve Waddington as King Richard was something like seven or eight feet tall and swathed in his desert whites reminded me of nothing so much as an astronaut, which I believe was the point. Of course Jonas Armstrong in the role of the title character kicks a lot of bum in this show and Lucy Griffiths as Maid Marian turns in an amazing performance as well.

But I started off bidding farewell to a couple of strong female characters and I wish I could be as enthusiastic about the shows they helm.

The Closer

Remember a couple years ago there was a protracted writers strike and it seemed to mess everything up? Well, it seems like USA’s “In Plain Sight” has mostly come out the other side of that -- the season ended on a much stronger note than it began, even with the hackneyed cliché “cliffhanger” of the central character in a post-surgical hospital bed recovering from a bullet wound to the chest.

Between TNT’s “The Closer” and “Saving Grace,” we’ve got two outstanding female leads, both of them a little older, both of them at the top of their game in law enforcement, both perfectly willing to bend the rules to accomplish their ends, although Kyra Sedgwick as “The Closer”s Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson does so very discreetly, and at her peril, given how closely everything she and the LAPD’s Major Crimes Division does is examined by the media, the rank-and-file and a couple of times this season by Force Investigation Division investigator Capt. Sharon Raydor, played with intensity by Mary McDonnell (“Battlestar Galactica”)

McDonnell’s appearance and the storylines she wove into this show were only part of the indication that the writing for “The Closer” is out of the rough and on the other side. The season opened with Fritz and Brenda getting married and moving into a new home. Brenda’s been preoccupied a bit by the loud ticking of her biological clock, the loss of Irene Daniels from her department -- a loss she’s still feeling, by the way -- no one is able to come across with the financials the way Irene did. Gabriel’s training continues apace, they got some new equipment through federal stimulus funding, but more to the point, Brenda has lost Kitty, her beloved but ailing fuzzball. Also, in the waning moments before the season five hiatus -- the show will in all likelihood return with new episodes in December or January to close out the season -- Brenda’s pot-head manipulative teenage niece Charlie -- played by Kyra’s real-life daughter Sosie Ruth -- arrives for a few episodes and is this wonderful spark of light. So far she’s only worked with her parents (Kevin Bacon in “Loverboy” and Kyra in “The Closer”), but she’s got some good instincts and seems to be off to a good start.

Saving Grace

No, the show that’s suffering is “Saving Grace.” Whereas “The Closer” is this wonderful ensemble of personalities, “Saving Grace” is fragmenting, and this season did not help. We had the usually unflappable Earl, Grace Hanadarko’s last-chance angel played by Leon Rippy, who can always find Grace wherever she is, completely at sea when she’s abducted by a loon from her distant past. He pulls a prayer circle together which allows for some rah-rah angel enthusiasm but ultimately doesn’t accomplish anything.

Also this season, Earl is watching over Neely, a girl who is a drug-addict, who Grace is led to by the dreams of a death-row inmate Earl is also in touch with. The girl undergoes a transformation during the course of the season, from ultra-religious nutjob to coma girl to stripper and then to attempted martyr. Part of me believes someone on the writing staff is exploring the seven demons attributed to Mary Magdalene, but if that’s the case, they could’ve come right out with it.

Then there’s Grace’s best friend, Rhetta, whose husband is for no reason having an affair. Cue the righteous indignation, and Rhetta kicks him out, and lord knows where they’re taking that next. Rhetta seems out of hand, but we really only have her perspective on things. Her husband barely has a name in this show and given Grace’s history it’s hard to believe even she hasn’t taken him on a test drive at some point in the past. She’s slept with everyone else’s husbands, Rhetta said, and confronted her about the pain she’s in.

Then there’s the on again off again thing with Ham Dewey, and there’s Grace’s annoyingly judgmental nephew, and hell, there’s Holly Hunter as Grace herself, who’s a complete mess but holds it together tolerably well for a person in law enforcement, although it’s hard to believe even Oklahoma’s that OK with public drunkenness, lewd behavior, nudity and vandalism in its law enforcement personnel, even in celebration of football. Then again, maybe not.

At any rate, this season has been all about pranks, misfiring storylines, people not sleeping together, this rival angel from out of nowhere who’s putting pressure on Earl to get Grace to Do Something -- so now we’ve got this image of a directly interventionist God sending out angels to do magic and miracles and to make us do stuff, but much like Grace we’re not given a lot of insight into what he’s got in mind. And Grace’s brother, the priest, has an image of Grace as a Healer.

Season Three ended with crazy girl Neely leaping from a five-story building, Grace leaping after her, both landing on a lawn and Crazy Girl saying, “I was saved by an angel! She has an angel and he saved us!” And Grace looking really uncomfortable.

The show is on mid-season hiatus, also until probably December or January, and the returning episodes are being billed as a series closeout. One can but hope. When the storylines haven’t been alternately outrageous and outlandish, they have been really silly, strange and hard to follow (much like the theology), and the writers don’t seem to know where any of this is going.

“Leverage” continues to rock Wednesdays at 9/8c on TNT. “Robin Hood” returns with back-to-back encore episodes from its second season next Sunday afternoon beginning at 3/2c on BBC America. Following the midseason finales, encore episodes of “The Closer” and “Saving Grace” begin at 8/7c Mondays and 11/10c Tuesdays on TNT.

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