Viewers should keep an eye on ‘In Plain Sight’

Any idiot can make a TV show. Find even the slightest twist on the disparate-team-of-investigators genre and you're practically guaranteed 22 episodes.

But making a great show? The kind that'll make you drop everything, rush home and unplug the phone for 30 minutes to an hour? That's next to impossible. Like cold fusion. Or understanding all the fuss over David Archuleta.

Take the new witness-protection drama "In Plain Sight" (10 p.m. Sunday, USA). It looked for all the world to be a sure thing, a quirky, sexy romp in the mold of the channel's cool-as-can-be "Burn Notice." But every time the series is presented a choice of two doors, it almost always ends up with Rice-A-Roni instead of the shiny new car.

After standout turns in "The West Wing" and "ER" -- and a role as his then-wife that made Howard Stern a fan for life -- Mary McCormack finally gets her own showcase as Albuquerque-based U.S. Marshal Mary Shannon. And, like pretty much every TV law enforcer since Joe Friday stopped blaming everything on the hippies, Mary doesn't exactly do things by the book.

In the 76-minute premiere (if you're still using a VCR, set it accordingly), she has ridiculous, baby-voiced phone sex with a mob hit man to figure out his whereabouts and barges into a men's room to interrogate a suspect, threatening to "drag you outta here by your surprisingly small wee-wee."

But the most telling scene comes when Mary informs an American Indian bartender she thinks is being hostile that he'd better cooperate "before Great White Father back in Washington goes all Little Big Horn on your ass." She sheepishly asks if that was too over-the-top and seems genuinely taken aback to learn that the Indians fared pretty well in that battle.

Instead of letting more of her personality trickle out that way, though, Mary is later sized-up by a potential romantic interest in a scene you've sat through in at least a dozen other series. "Let's see, typical relationship has a shelf life of, oh, I'd say about a month, tops," he tells her. "No real friends. Can't quite figure out why you're always on the outside looking in. No one 'gets you,' but, hey, that's their problem." Well, thank you, Captain Exposition.

Mary and her wisecracking partner, a U.S. Marshal named (groan!) Marshall (Frederick Weller), quickly establish an easy rapport, and at least one of them should be onscreen at all times.

But then "In Plain Sight" goes and tries to be an ensemble drama, with silly subplots involving some combination of Mary's up-to-no-good mom (Lesley Ann Warren, flighty as usual), her up-to-even-less-good sister (Nichole Hiltz, doing her best Jaime Pressly) and her sometime boyfriend (Cristián de la Fuente, who for the most part is just asked to look pretty).

And future episodes focus more and more on that week's guest stars, to the point that McCormack ends up fighting for screen time on her own series. It's tough getting good help on basic-cable money, and the scenes without her, or to a lesser extent Weller, are just dreadful.

"In Plain Sight" earns points for its fresh subject matter -- Here's your new identity and your sad little apartment. Now don't ever contact your friends and family or practice your previous career, because practically anything could lead the bad guys to you. Enjoy! -- and its still relatively untapped setting offers a change of pace.

But after a few weeks of seeing witnesses relocated to Albuquerque, often a family at a time (you just know the real witness protection program isn't that busy), you can't help but wonder when the number of protectees will overrun the city's general population.

Despite its flaws, though, "In Plain Sight" is still worth a look, and there's little doubt that it will do just fine.

It shares the whole babe-with-a-badge thing with TNT's smash hits "The Closer" and "Saving Grace." And interest in the cast has never been higher: McCormack just picked up a Tony nomination, and de la Fuente, supposedly injured arm and all, made it to the finals of "Dancing with the Stars."

But the main thing the drama has going for it is the fact that cable's scripted options this summer are slim. Like mid-'90s, wonder-what's-on-"Arliss" slim.

Showtime's "Weeds" is still a few weeks away. "Burn Notice," "The Closer" and "Saving Grace," along with USA's "Monk" and "Psych," won't be back until July. And, thanks to the writers strike and a stunning lack of planning, powerhouses HBO and FX are without any of their scripted series until at least September.

"In Plain Sight" may not make you drop everything, but it should help you get through the summer.

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