TV review: Moving on from McDreamy

You know how it is: there are way too many perky, cutesy, glib, attractively peopled American light dramas on TV already - Grey's Anatomy, Brothers and Sisters, Desperate Housewives - and you're blowed if you're going to get sucked into another one.

And along comes another A-grade perky/cutesy number - TV2's new Private Practice, (Monday, 8.30pm) - and there's another weekly hour of your life pleasantly wasted for the foreseeable future.

Most annoyingly, Private Practice - a spinoff from Grey's Anatomy featuring Addison Montgomery - is pretty much as appealing as its parent show.

It has a kooky, good-looking cast, heartwarming stories, and enough of an undercurrent of subversiveness to cut the syrup.

To be the teeniest bit picky, it's a mild mystery that they should pick Addison (Kate Walsh) as a star spin- off, as she's not wildly charismatic, and no more than routinely gorgeous by American TV standards - which is, admittedly, very gorgeous indeed, but usually a gal has to have that little bit extra.

Also, Addison burst into Grey's Anatomy as the bad girl - the one who'd broken Dr McDreamy's heart by having an affair with his best friend, and then tried to win him back off series heroine Meredith.

Even if you don't hold that against her, you have to be somewhat cross that her return touched off an interminable series of make-ups and break-ups between Meredith and McD that has progressively made Grey's into a bit of a chore.

However, it seems clear from Private Practice that Addison's charm is that she's a fixed point around which more eccentric and likeable characters can move.

The practice she has moved to in Los Angeles includes Cooper, a wonderfully louche paediatrician (Paul Adelstein); Violet (Amy Brenneman), a disorganised but uber-empathetic psychiatrist; and surfer- dude-looking midwife trainee Chris (William Dell Parker), who is primetime little-brother material.

The practice is run by tough, scary fertility specialist Naomi (Audra MacDonald), who has just split up with her husband Sam (Taye Diggs), and it's clear that the fact they should never have divorced is going to make up some of the plot for the next 30-something episodes.

But most of all, and here's the information Grey's fans need the most, there is another Dr McDreamy, in the form of alternative medical specialist Peter Wilder (Tim Daly).

It's clear that most of the plot for the show, as long as it runs, will concern the fireworks between him, with his acupuncture needles and tinctures, and Addison, who tends to wield the scalpel first and ask questions later.

Another wee criticism: Wilder isn't the remotest patch on the Dr McD of Grey's Anatomy. So far, I'd be labelling him Dr McSmarmy.

He's no more than averagely handsome, but his looks are overlaid with that patronising, sanctimonious air that New Agers have toward the medical profession. He is smugly convinced that Addison came back to town because, last time she lived in LA, he kissed her passionately.

She naturally insists the kiss had nothing to do with her return. We know better. And he has already begun to win her over, by showing her, in a delivery room emergency, that acupuncture is a good substitute for anaesthetic.

So he will woo her with Rescue Remedy, witchhazel and the Memory of Water theory, till in a dozen or so episodes, the show will devolve into the Grey's on-again-off-again romance schtick, and we'll be able to skip it.

But till then, there's much to enjoy, as American television seems to have learnt from the British in recent years about how to create and sustain endearingly eccentric characters.

One warning, however, is against what might be called Chic-Talk. On top of the McDreamy/McSteamy lingo is a new and potentially even more irritating tic of speech: "Focus!"

At least twice an episode there's an epic all-in squabble. Only someone always shouts "Focus!" and the squabbling stops.

It palled the first time it cropped up, but it's the kind of verbal gimmick that might well catch on in the workplace if Private Practice inherits even half of the audience Grey's Anatomy used to have.

Which is another reason to be mightily annoyed that it's so damned enjoyable.

* What do you think of Private Practice? Post your comments below.

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