Showtime aims high

Tonight Showtime offers a "preview" of Weeds, a new half-hour dramedy starring Mary-Louise Parker as a recently widowed mother of two who becomes the neighborhood pot dealer in order to support her family (the same episode airs tomorrow night at 10, the timeslot in which future episodes will premiere, in addition to numerous rebroadcasts throughout the week).

Yeah it's another suburban satire and sure it can be compared to Desperate Housewives but as usual with Showtime the real goal seems to be launching a show that HBO would actually be jealous of. I'm not so sure they've succeeded just yet.

The pilot feels more like a quirky indie film than a television series. It was directed by Brian Dannelly who was responsible for the smug indie Saved!, but the show's writer and creator, Jenji Kohan, has worked exclusively in television. The good news is that, according to several early reviews, the show gets better as it goes along, especially when Justin Kirk (Parker's co-star in Angels in America) joins the cast in episode four. A half-hour cable show actually improving as it continues would be a refreshing change of pace considering the recent creative implosions of Fat Actress and The Comeback (which were content trying to rework the same increasingly tired joke over and over with each new episode).

The supporting cast includes familiar faces like Elizabeth Perkins (who gets to be very nasty) and Kevin Nealon (who gets to smoke a lot of pot). They're both pretty good in the first episode, as is guest star Justin Chatwin (who went on to make a name for himself in War of the Worlds after filming this).

But if there's an immediate reason to tune in it's clearly Parker, an actress who has found television to be more receptive of her quirky charms than the film world has been (she took home a well-deserved Emmy for Angels in America and was also nominated for The West Wing). There's every indication that her character will offer opportunities worthy of her talent.

Also airing tonight is the first new episode of Six Feet Under since the big event last week. Although it's easy enough to find out what happened I don't care to spoil it here for anyone who hasn't seen it. I'm just glad it has people buzzing about this show again, which inexplicably became fashionable to bash in its previous season. This most recent development is of course perfect for a show grounded in the exploration of mortality and I'm eager to see what happens next now that there are only three episodes left to air.