“Dark Blue”
Wednesday 10pm, TNT
It’s always good to see Dylan McDermott again; he remains likable even after that disastrous male “Sex and the City” show “Big Shots” a couple seasons back. (It nearly destroyed poor Michael Vartan’s career.) Now the one-time star of “The Practice” and “fine hangin’ man” from Steel Magnolias is back in another new series, this one a cop drama about a unit so deep undercover, some of its colleagues don’t know its members are in the field. As far as cop shows go, it’s an interesting premise. McDermott plays the ringleader of the undercover fuzz, a guy so obsessed with his job that he’s sacrificed any semblance of a personal life so he can take down criminals. He’s joined by a rag-tag bunch of underlings with similar personality disorders, including a newlywed and a pathological liar.
“Michael & Michael Have Issues”
Wednesday 10:30pm, Comedy Central
Michael Ian Black has been kicking around the pop culture landscape for more than a decade now, gaining indie cred with sketch troupe The State and wacked-out variety show “Viva Variety,” and then scoring mainstream attention with his supporting role on “Ed” and frequent snarky appearances on those VH1 talking heads shows, like “I Love the ’80s.” But he’s never really been able to transform that buzz into a big breakout role. Maybe that will change with this new show, in which he stars with former State buddy Michael Showalter. The concept is a little high-minded, featuring a sketch show-within-a-show, in which the Michaels play (one assumes) exaggerated versions of themselves, sparring not unlike human versions of the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote.
“Dirty Sexy Money”
Saturday 10pm, ABC
By all accounts “Dirty Sexy Money” should have been a hit. It has a fabulous cast (led by Peter Krause, Donald Sutherland, Jill Clayburgh and Lucy Liu), launched with plenty of initial promotion, and is really the only contemporary show to pick up the great prime-time soap tradition of “Dallas” or “Dynasty.” But an unfortunate confluence of events—a pilot that had to be massively re-worked and re-shot, a main castmember quickly shuffled off due to personal issues and especially the momentum-killing writer’s strike of 2007—ultimately led to the promising show flailing by early in Season 2. Now ABC is dumping the final four episodes in the wasteland that is Saturday night in the summer. Ouch.
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