TV on DVD: Saving Grace - Season One

Dawn praises Holly Hunter in a series that takes chances and refuses to play it safe.

Television shows that attempt to discuss issues of faith and spirituality set themselves up for criticism from all sides. Whether they take the safe, cuddly-Christian route (for instance, Touched by an Angel or 7th Heaven) or a more acerbic, post-modern path (Joan of Arcadia), there will be viewers who think that any discussion of religion in prime time is tantamount to preaching, while more devout believers will see sacrilege at every turn.

So a show like Saving Grace has a particularly tough row to hoe. In the premiere episode, Det. Grace Hanadarko (Holly Hunter) sleeps with her married partner, drinks like a fish, swears like a longshoreman, and generally embraces any and all sins that will further speed her rapid acceleration towards Hell. After running down a pedestrian while drunk-driving in her battered Porsche, Grace is visited by an angel -- a tobacco-chewing good ol' boy named Earl (Deadwood's Leon Rippy), who looks more like a seedy barfly or a street crazy than an agent of the Lord. He undoes the hit-and-run (or, just maybe, the whole accident was an illusion created just to get Grace's attention) and then attaches himself to her like a bad case of the clap, insisting that God sent him to save her from herself.

It's another "value-added detective" story, complying with the apparently concrete rule that television audiences won't watch anything with complex themes unless the main character's also solving crimes. But as such programs go, Saving Grace is one of the best, in no small part due to the casting of Hunter. Few actresses can play a combination of flirtiness, grit, raw sexuality and irreverence with her panache, and for Grace to work, we have to like Grace. And it's not always easy. Her drinking and promiscuity -- she not only cheats with her partner, Ham (Kenneth Johnson), she cheats on him, as well -- are tied to intensely felt, and highly toxic, demons. She's a dedicated cop, but she has to be dragged to even the most innocuous family get-together, and even with her cop buddies she tends to take advantage and push buttons. Grace is the sort of woman who's called "difficult" by people who love them, while the people who don't love them use far more vulgar descriptives.

It doesn't help that show creator Nancy Miller has hedged her bets by loading an entire DC-10's worth of baggage on Hunter's character. Grace's sister, we discover, was killed in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and Grace is wracked with guilt over her death. She was raised Catholic, and had a traumatic experience with a priest as a child. Grace's loving brother John (Tom Irwin) is a priest (one of the good ones), and her loving, deeply religious best friend, Rhetta (Laura San Giacomo) -- who also happens to be a forensics tech! -- are both on hand to offer expository dogma when the situation requires it. And then every episode brings Grace a new case to solve that somehow ties into one of the Important Lessons that Grace needs to learn, with Earl appearing at unexpected moments to spar with her (both verbally and physically) in an attempt to save her soul. There's a lot going on here ... perhaps too much, yet the results are almost always exciting to watch.

Aside from, and inextricably connected to, Hunter's presence, the thing that brings Saving Grace so vividly to life is the show's refusal to play it safe. Since it airs on TNT, the usual prissy broadcast standards don't apply, so Grace can swear, and she can be licentious without being punished by the morality police, and we get to see Hunter nekkid. In fact, we see Hunter nekkid a lot on the show -- she strips down in practically every episode, whether it's to offer a good-natured flash to her elderly neighbor, or left tied up on her bed, face-down with her conquest's name written on her derrière in lipstick. This is a show that would be impossible to produce intact on one of the big three networks, and TNT shows remarkable cojones for allowing Miller to operate on the level that she does -- it makes for very adult television that assumes you're able to handle whatever it throws at you. If not, you're welcome to change the channel. It's refreshing.

As with most new shows, there's some awkwardness occasionally as the writers find their footing, but the first season as a whole is complex, often clever, sometimes heartbreaking, and always, always intensely watchable. When you come across a show like Saving Grace, it's a reminder of why we have cable programming in the first place -- to take chances, and to go places that network shows don't dare. And to allow us to see Holy Hunter nekkid.

20th Century Fox Home Entertainment gives the first season of Saving Grace a fairly rudimentary treatment, offering all 13 episodes (full frame, with good Dolby sound) on four discs with a rather disappointing slate of extras. There are some less-than exciting commentaries that occasionally offer good nuggets of information, plus a handful of behind-the-scenes featurettes with Hunter, Rippy, San Giacomo and executive producer Gary Randall. There's also a music video for the title theme by Everlast, which only serves to point out that the song, when played in its entirety, isn't really very good.

Dawn Taylor would trade her immortal soul for a 2009 Mustang convertible and quart of Chubby Hubby.

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