KEY POINTS:
Hell hath no fury like a scornful woman with a guilt complex. Detective Grace Hanadarko, anti-heroine of new drama Saving Grace (TV3, last night, 9.40pm) is caught in a spiral of self-destruction as powerful as that twister in the show's opening credits.
This is an America where bad
things happen. Terrorists and catastrophic storms kill thousands, churches harbour vipers' nests of child abuse.
Saving Grace is set in Oklahoma City where, 12 years after the Timothy McVeigh bombing, the pain hasn't eased. Grace (played by Oscar winner Holly Hunter) blames herself for her sister being killed in the blast.
Grace has found ways to numb the pain. The drama opens with her bonking her married work partner, her lack of shame signalled, it seemed, by the unusual amount of nudity for an American drama sex scene. Next up her favourite party trick, tipping the bourbon into the can of Coke.
Grace is as comfortable with her demons as she is with letting her ugly drooling dog sleep on the bed, or taking her nephew and a school-friend for a wild joyride in her cop car.
But the bad cop was in for a fall in last night's pilot episode. Driving drunk, she ran over and killed a man, calling on the God she doesn't believe in to help her. Next minute an angel called Earl appeared to offer her one last chance and swept this drama into a strange hybrid territory, Bad Lieutenant meets Joan of Arcadia.
God's angel likes chewing tobacco and the Big Man himself rides a Harley. But despite these mid-western cultural adaptations, Grace still had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the light or rather, to the Grand Canyon where Earl showed the reluctant sinner the wonder of God's creation.
It was a stunning scene that could have been one of those biblical illustrations by William Blake, had the English Romantic poet been familiar with cowboy boots and Arizona.
So while Grace was trying to solve a missing child case, she was also figuring out whether she was suffering alcoholic hallucinations or spiritual enlightenment. Happily, her job gives her access to the forensic skills of her colleague Rhetta (Laura San Giacomo).
Saving Grace offers Hunter a showcase for her talent for portraying adrenalin-fuelled torment. The tiny actress is less convincing as a cop who packs enough punch to knock a big bloke off his feet.
But so far, the show looks to be an odd mix of hard-bitten reality and sugary sentimentality. And the message is confusing. There's a lot of people going to hell, says angel Earl, before taking off to a golf course in Florida, a reference surely to George Bush. It seems to be advocating faith in a God who guides individual destinies, yet at the same time showing a country suffering under a leader with an unquestioned belief in just that.
On the plus side, it is not afraid to ask the big questions about God and evil. It is just hard to pick whether it's heaven Saving Grace is trying to raise, or hell.
