Television: Scaring the Suburbs

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Close to Home has all the high-quality production hallmarks of the Bruckheimer empire, although it's thankfully less flashy than the CGI-heavy, color-coded CSIs. And Finnigan, who was adorable in NBC's otherwise forgettable sitcom Committed, is the Security Mom of prime-time sleuths, exuding both warmth and steely backbone--a crusader for justice with a fridgeful of breast milk at the office. Chase gets more and faster backstory than most of the CSI copbots, even if it's pretty ham-handed: near the end of the pilot, she strokes her sleeping baby's head and coos, "I'll keep you safe." Parents fear for their kids' security and fear not having the time to raise them properly. Chase represents, and overcomes, both fears. If Hillary Clinton wants to be President, she should TiVo this along with Commander in Chief.

Storywise, Close to Home is unimpressive; the pilot's abusive dad is such a sneering, obvious bad guy that your dog could have put him away for 20 years. And the show suffers from a common failing of crime dramas about lawyers: it needs Chase not just to prosecute crimes--boring!--but also to solve them. I suspect that the show will go into ever less plausible contortions to take her out of the courtroom and into crime scenes. But it may be that viewers will not care. It's a big, spooky country, and Bruckheimer knows far better than I how many people out there are ready to put the kids to bed; flip on the baby monitor, motion-sensitive lights and alarm system; and settle down in front of the widescreen for a nice, safe scare.