Just the cops thanks, no God

Once upon a time, if a film actor made the move to TV it was seen as giving up. Real actors didn't work in television. And if someone say, David Caruso tried to make the move the other way, they were inevitably dismissed as "just a TV actor" (even George Clooney took years to get over this stigma).

How times change. Now many TV shows are seen as superior to what's on offer on the big screen, and the likes of Kiefer Sutherland (24), Martin Sheen (The West Wing) and Alec Baldwin (30 Rock, which bizarrely lasted only a few episodes here despite its utter brilliance) have enjoyed career resurgences thanks to the box.

Now a convoy of "proper" actors are making the move to the small screen with varying degrees of success: the ever-hyper James Woods has seen Shark become a big hit (though it's nowhere near good enough a show for his talents), Jeff Goldblum has the noirish Raines (yet to be seen here), and Oscar-winner Sally Field has Brothers & Sisters.

New series Saving Grace (TV3, Monday, 9.30pm) offers an even more appealing one, Oscar winner and perpetually fantastic Holly Hunter. There are few film pleasures greater than watching pint-sized dynamo Hunter in the right part; just witness her brassy-broad roles in the likes of Broadcast News or The Firm.

Unfortunately, while Saving Grace gives Hunter a tailor-made character which she plays to the hilt sassy, Southern, sexy it has little else to offer but half-baked religiosity, painfully obvious soundtrack cues and pointlessly frenetic editing.

It all starts promisingly enough, with Hunter as Oklahoma detective Grace Hanadarko having noisy sex against a wall with a guy who later turns out to be her partner.

Nookie done with, Grace fires up a fag, swigs a beer, pops a pill and in response to a TV news report about prayer vigils being held for a missing girl loudly proclaims she doesn't believe in God. Kudos if you've already figured out where this is going.

Yep, Grace needs saving (see what they did with the title there? And they say wit is dead).

That night she gets trolleyed and unwisely drives home, ignoring the old maxim that you should never mix booze, cars and classic rock radio. She ploughs into a guy on the footpath, inspects the bloody body and pleads for God's help. And lo, for it was ham-fistedly scripted, does an angel appear. Said heavenly fellow goes by the name of Earl, and he chews tobacco and is good with the down-home advice. I thought we'd had our fill of redneck stereotype angels with the crappy John Travolta film Michael, but there you go.

Naturally, she wakes up to find that she apparently didn't hit a pedestrian and it was all a dream.

But the spot of blood found on one of her buttons says otherwise, so she gets her police lab buddy to analyse the blood only to find it belongs to a convict named Leon Cooley (Bokeem Woodbine), who's been on death row for years. She interviews him in prison and, wouldn't you know it, he had the same "dream". Thus does Grace's godly awakening begin.

But this is only half of Saving Grace the other half being a not-bad cop show (Grace is a detective, remember). In between bouts of being compelled by the power of Christ, Grace works on trying to find the missing girl mentioned earlier, and these segments go to show that there could have a been a fine, if routine, police drama here if they'd dropped all the God stuff.

I know I'd rather have a routine cop show that fully utilises the talents of Hunter than a pious mess that fumbles them.

- © Fairfax NZ News