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The two best dramas of the season represent the range of TV's fascination with matters of good and evil, from the darkest recesses of the soul to the harsh light of the courtroom. American Gothic (Fridays, 10 p.m. E.T.), one of the eeriest shows to come along in years, revolves around Lucas Buck (Gary Cole), a sinister sheriff. Buck runs everything in the fictional Southern town of Trinity, where the weirdness is as oppressive as the humidity. He lies, rapes and murders while whistling the theme song of The Andy Griffith Show. To the locals he appears a kindly, caring lawman; he finds people jobs and gives peppy talks to grade-school classes. But his mission throughout the series is to gain control of a young boy (Lucas Black) whose sister Buck has killed and whose only weapon against the sheriff is the girl's otherworldly guidance. Cole plays Buck with just the right pathological gaze and, alternately, avuncular smile; he's chillingly convincing in both roles.
American Gothic never lets up on its creepy surrealism--it is Twin Peaks without the sardonic levity. The show was created and scripted, improbably, by former Hardy Boys star Shaun Cassidy, who says he "wanted to do a show set in the Cape Fear South, where there is still a rich sense of folklore--not the magnolia-and-lemonade South we're used to on TV." He has succeeded. "I always saw this not as a horror show," he says, "but as a show about moral struggles."
The moral struggles are more intricately played out on ABC's Murder One (Thursdays, 10 p.m. E.T.), probably the season's most eagerly anticipated new show. Conceived by Steven Bochco, the creator of Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue, Murder One will spend its entire 23-episode season following the course of a single homicide case. And for viewers who find this suspiciously familiar, Bochco stresses that he came up with the idea years before the O.J. Simpson trial.
The story involves the murder of a 15-year-old girl found dead in her older sister's apartment. The accused is a socially prominent businessman with a sordid side, who police believe was having an affair with the teenager. Stanley Tucci exudes a quiet smarminess as the suspect, and despite the show's tawdry subject matter, it never feels cheap. If subsequent episodes prove as gripping as the first, audiences could get hooked on the unusual serial format.
Yet Murder One, scheduled opposite last season's hit ER, does have a tough road ahead. Bochco admits the format has pitfalls; though only seven scripts have been written, he knows how the case will be resolved--and there's little chance to make midcourse corrections. "The degree of difficulty of doing something like this is much higher than I thought," he says. "If you think you've made a wrong turn, you can't go back and fix it." For TV viewers, though, an hour with Murder One is the best blind date of the season.
--With reporting by William Tynan/New York