Glory be. The cynics in Hollywood have discovered faith.
They believe that if they put Holly Hunter center-screen in a drama sprinkled with talk of angels, the Lord and Bible study, if they make her character a nonbelieving, cursing, smoking, drinking, fornicating cop who (worst of all) parks her black Porsche in handicapped spaces, and then if they depict her eventual turnaround, they can win the religious audience that has forsaken them.
Can they get a witness?
TNT raptures up the drama “Saving Grace” on Monday (8 p.m., Comcast digital Channel 40) with the Oscar-winning Hunter in her television series debut. The network clearly wants a shot at the reported $3 billion-a-year Christian- themed entertainment industry that’s boomed since Mel Gibson proved he could sell a Jesus movie.
What distinguishes “Saving Grace” from TV’s other nods at religion – “Highway to Heaven” to “Touched by an Angel” to “7th Heaven” – is its cable- ready sex and foul language. Some will be put off by the more graphically illustrated aspects of the fallen woman’s life. When she falls to her knees, it’s not to pray.
Grace Hanadarko (Hunter) is dark-o, all right. She’s living fast and loose, running from the pain of personal and professional tragedies. Her godless sinning catches up with her one night when, speeding after too many drinks, her Porsche hits a man walking along the road. In despair, she asks God’s help.
She gets it, in the form of Earl (Leon Rippy of “Deadwood”), a redneck, tobacco-chewing angel with special-effects wings.
When Earl gives Grace a transcendent moment of awakening, complete with Grand Canyon aerial shots, Grace finds it “Amazin’.”
“That’s the power of faith,” Earl tells her.
“Better than sex!” she exclaims.
Wouldn’t you know, this Grace is going to be a tough one to reform. As if to punctuate the point, she burps aloud with her so-ugly-he’s-cute bulldog. Can this woman be saved?
Her police partner and occasional sex mate, Ham (played by Kenneth Johnson, the late “Lemonhead” Lemansky of “The Shield”), wouldn’t know a Bible passage if it hit him in his already black eye.
Laura San Giacomo plays Rhetta Rodriguez, a criminologist with unaccountably unattractive heavy glasses. She’s a believer, but she’s also a faithful friend who doesn’t judge Grace. Rhetta conveniently embodies science and faith, together in one character. She sees truth and beauty through her microscope and, besides solving crimes, can’t wait for the chance to study angel feathers in the police lab.
The excesses of the series become laughable as the hours progress. Not only does a cow have spots that can be seen to resemble the face of Jesus with a crown of thorns (“Holy cow!” says Rhetta), but Grace is inclined to spill bourbon on a Bible. The pilot wraps with a sermon on the Oklahoma City bombing mount.
“Why did he do it?” Grace’s nephew asks as they tour the memorial of the attack that killed his mother. “Tim McVeigh is in Hell so I’ll never know,” the boy says. “Maybe we can ask God when we get to Heaven.”
The music track blares Los Lonely Boys’ “Heaven.” In the second episode, Grace’s car radio blasts “Heaven must be missin’ an angel” on every channel, despite her efforts to tune it out.
Cute, Earl. Cute, writer-creator Nancy Miller. The gimmickry is heavy-handed, but that’s the point. It’s going to take a blunt angel to shake Grace from her old ways.
Miller is careful not to steer the story toward any particular denomination, although Grace’s brother Johnny is a Catholic priest.
Miller doesn’t even stress any particular flavor of divinity in the push to faith. The rare invocation of Jesus Christ’s name comes with an exclamation point – as an epithet when Johnny asks if Grace is drunk.
No, but she’s mad as hell.
Viewers may feel equally frustrated at the anvil-touch of “Saving Grace.” Hunter is fun to watch; Johnson, Rippy and San Giacomo are appealing. But do enough people have the craving for such a clunky drama to succeed?
“Miracles happen all the time, you just have to believe,” Earl says.
TNT is fervently hoping.
TV critic Joanne Ostrow can be reached at 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com.
