In the opening moments of the new CBS drama, “Close to Home,” we see a big city skyline in the distance as symphonic music plays.
A paperboy tosses the day’s news to porch after porch.
A girl rocks back and forth on a swing in a pristinely manicured, lush green lawn, and more kids ride through the quaint suburban neighborhood, all wearing bike helmets, of course.
Nothing goes wrong in this idyllic suburb, that is, until fire engine sirens shatter the tranquillity and the music strikes a more dramatic tone.
A house fire rages and heroic firefighters break through a basement window to pull a boy, a girl and their mother out of the burning home.
Annabeth Chase, played by Jennifer Finnigan of last year’s sitcom flop “Committed” and the soap opera “The Bold and the Beautiful,” has just finished giving her baby a bath when she notices the thick plume of black smoke in the distance out her kitchen window.
The next morning marks her return to the office after a three-month maternity leave. She’s an up-and-coming Indianapolis prosecutor and her first case back is the house fire, which appears to have been set intentionally.
“The creeps don’t scare me,” Chase says at one point during the investigation. “It’s the so-called decent guys. You know, the ones that go to church and join the Rotary Club while they hide in plain sight. Those are the ones who scare me.”
“Close to Home,” which premieres at 10 p.m. Tuesday on KIRO-TV, is another crime procedural, no matter how badly it wants not to be.
There are roughly 112 crime and courtroom dramas on television, and each one of them will try to tell you that they’re different from all the others – even the ones that have the same names, a la “CSI” and “Law &Order.”
Maybe it’s coincidence that “Close to Home” shares its timeslot with “Boston Legal” and “Law &Order: Special Victims Unit.”
Maybe it was inevitable.
If you toss a dart into a pool full of balloons, something’s bound to pop.
The twist on the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced “Close to Home” is not that the crimes will always actually happen near Chase’s own house, but that they happen in the suburbs, where we theoretically least expect them.
Executive producer Jonathan Littman said that’s the key difference, in addition to Chase’s new “working mom” status.
“Most crimes and most crime shows are urban,” Littman said this summer at the TV Critics Association press tour in Los Angeles. “Our pilot is inspired by something that really did happen, and most of our stories are going to be inspired by, as they always are on our shows, what we find in the newspaper.
“I’m always more surprised when it is happening in a nice, quiet neighborhood, and that’s where the urgency of the title comes from. You don’t really know who lives next door to you at any given time.”
The point is rammed home, forced pun intended, a little too much in the premiere.
Future episodes promise cases involving a kidnapping and a suburban prostitution ring, but there just doesn’t seem to be enough separating “Home” from any of the others.
Chase’s working mom thing isn’t a big enough wild card and it’s handled in a pretty formulaic way.
Her male boss, Steve Sharpe, played by John Carroll Lynch of HBO’s “Carnivale,” is uncomfortable with talk about breast milk.
A female counterpart in the office, Maureen Scofield, played by Kimberly Elise of the films “Beloved” and “Diary of a Mad Black Woman,” was promoted while Chase was on maternity leave – a promotion that Chase thought should have been hers.
Still, as easy as it is to blow off yet another bizarre crime drama as just another bizarre crime drama, “Home” is just vanilla enough to find a niche somewhere in the ratings and stick around for a little while.
Victor Balta’s column runs Mondays and Thursdays on the A&E page. Reach him at 425-339-3455 or vbalta@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
