Saving Grace
TNT
Mondays 10/9 p.m. Central

Saving Grace is a new TNT hour-long drama wherein Holly Hunter plays Grace. Grace is a slutty, violent, alcoholic, atheistic Oklahoma cop with a heart of gold. In order to retain the audience's sympathy, it is revealed in the debut episode that Grace became an atheist because of abuse suffered at the hands of a priest in 4th grade; atheism, of course, is essentially a type of mental disorder.

The first show in the series hinges upon a miraculous event. Not a possible miraculous event; the divine power is CGI-accentuated, and therefore as real as cold Chicago winters and income tax. An incredibly intoxicated Grace runs over a dude by the side of the road. In a moment of atheistic doubt, she implores God for assistance. A chaw-loving, good ol' boy angel named Earl appears, whisks her off to a precarious stone pillar several thousand feet above the Grand Canyon and asks her to accept God. In return: the dead body goes away. Inexplicably, Grace still isn't sure if she wants to join the side of the angels.

Strong winds blow, and Grace must cling to the angel for support. She finally relaxes, now that her life is no longer in peril and the danger has relented. "That's the power of faith," he says.

To clarify: an angel — a literal, wing-having angel — offers to help you get out of murdering someone if you accept God and clean up your life. You hesitate, so he threatens to kill you. You finally decide to accept the gift, because a) God is obviously, literally real, and b) you don't want to get blown into the Grand Canyon. Oh, and c) if you kill someone while driving drunk, it has legal reprecussions.

In what way does this decision relate to faith? It is said that proof denies faith, but there's a lot of gray area to play with there. Many apparent miracles can be written off as natural quirks, probabalistic anomalies that are undeniably weird, but explicable through science. Or, if you want to take a leap, faith.

Being teleported by a homicidal angel to the top of the Grand Canyon does not squeeze even into the very edge of this gaping chasm of a philosophical gray area. Once this happens, not believing in God isn't a matter of being an atheist, it's a matter of being a fucking idiot.

Put into the same circumstances as Grace, Christopher Hitchens would accept God.

It's not clear that this kind of theologically boneheaded setup is necessarily a bad thing.

The remarkable thing about the program is that it manages to work on two levels: first, as a sort of sexy, violent, hard-chargin' Sopranos for the Bible-thumping fundamentalist Christian literalist set. Second, as a deconstruction of everything the abortion-fighting, death penalty-loving pro-war Bible belt masses buy into. If you happen to believe that Heaven and Hell are literal, and that God acts directly upon the world through spiritual agents, Saving Grace is pleasantly validating and engaging. And if you happen to believe the opposite, the show is stimulatingly annoying and/or a parody of everything you've rejected as being a bunch of superstitious hokum.

If you're the kind of person who wants to watch a chaw-spitting angel named Earl attempt to save sexy, drunky, crazy Grace from her sinful ways, there's lots of back-and-forth to savor. If you're the kind of person who finds this kind of spiritual hokum to be a bunch of crap, you'll still feel vigorously exercised by the show's hard-charging and unapologetically direct approach to delicate theological questions. The acting is strong, the music is good, and the show's not likely to leave many viewers lacking an opinion.

The debut does raise a procedural question: After leading off with an angel performing a miracle, where do you go from there?

— James Norton (jim@flakmag.com)