Quirky ‘Glades’ a winner for A&E

Hit TV shows are a lot like colossal, carefully orchestrated JetBlue freakouts: It takes only one to put you on the map.

I still remember feeling embarrassed for a fellow critic when his glowing review was plastered all over ads for a new cop show called "The Shield." If it was any good, I reasoned, it wouldn't be on FX, which at the time was mostly known, if at all, for reruns of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Married ... With Children."

Then "The Shield" aired, it was fantastic, and FX never again was without quality programming.

Before long, cable outposts up and down the dial had their own breakout scripted series: USA's "Monk," TNT's "The Closer," AMC's "Mad Men" and Starz's late, great "Party Down." And while I'd never call TV Land's "Hot in Cleveland" innovative, it proved to be a huge hit with its target audience: baby boomers and viewers who somehow still haven't had their fill of Betty White.

Now, after a couple of near misses with Benjamin Bratt's "The Cleaner" and Patrick Swayze's "The Beast," A&E has planted its flag with "The Glades" (10 p.m. Sundays).

The South Florida-based crime procedural doesn't break any new ground, but it's intriguingly off-kilter and a good bit of fun. And series star Matt Passmore makes for an interesting lead. He's the smoothie that would result from stuffing "Dexter's" Michael C. Hall, "The Mentalist's" Simon Baker and "The Hurt Locker's" Jeremy Renner into a blender.

In fact, "The Glades" is so deceptively simple, its entire concept is summed up in the show's opening credits with Passmore's voice-over:

"Some say I don't play well with others. I was a damn good detective in Chicago until a disagreement with my boss encouraged me to pack it up and make a change. So I put the Windy City in my rearview and headed to the Sunshine State. Kick back, play some golf, work on my tan. Maybe write the occasional speeding ticket. Yeah, well, that didn't work out."

The "disagreement" involved Passmore's character, Jim Longworth, being shot in the rump by his boss, who thought Longworth had slept with his wife. He hadn't, Longworth swears, "but I was the only one in the department that didn't." And it "didn't work out" because even in sleepy Palm Glade, Fla., Longworth finds himself up to his bullet-scarred backside in murders.

Aside from airing on A&E, where it's nestled among the likes of "Intervention," "Hoarders" and shows that turn aging rockers Gene Simmons and Dee Snider into wacky TV dads, the most surprising thing about "The Glades" is how irritating Longworth can be.

He's smug and has a penchant for running off at the mouth. He puts crime scene tape around his ball when his golf game is interrupted by a call that a body has turned up. And he badgers suspects with questions that have nothing to do with that week's murder: "Doesn't matter if they make sense to you," he says of his random inquiries. "Half the time they don't make sense to me."

When told the alligator he just put a bullet in was a protected species, he shrugs and says: "Well, then how come I had such a clear shot?"

Longworth also has a comically combative relationship with the county medical examiner (Carlos Gomez). Heck, his behavior gets people so riled up, his pushed-to-his-breaking-point partner killed his own wife in the first episode and fed her to the gators.

But at least one character -- Callie (Kiele Sanchez), the tough, making-it-on-her-own nurse Longworth met after he was bitten by a gator at his partner's crime scene -- finds him tolerable. Just not tolerable enough -- yet -- to divorce her husband, who's doing a stretch for armed robbery.

"Lost" viewers will remember Sanchez as the prettier half of Nikki and Paulo, the reviled couple eventually buried alive on the island, whose mere presence many fans regard as the show's low point. Interestingly, her "Glades" character's incarcerated hubby is played by Clayne Crawford, who earlier this year, as ex-con Kevin Wade, was part of one of the most infuriating subplots in the eight seasons of "24." Given their proximity, I fully expect 13-year-old Uriah Shelton, who plays their onscreen offspring, to grow up to derail three, maybe four great series before his career's over.

Anyway, while Callie is slowly warming to Longworth, viewers took to him right away, giving A&E the dramatic foothold it has long sought.

That success should make it far easier to launch "Breakout Kings," one of the hottest pilots of the fall, which the cable channel picked up after it was surprisingly dropped at the last minute by Fox.

And it's all thanks to the often disagreeable Longworth, which only reinforces the message of most reality shows, the very thing A&E is hoping to move away from: It's less important to be nice than to be noticed.

Christopher Lawrence's Life on the Couch column appears on Sundays. E-mail him at clawrence@ reviewjournal.com.