Put your Close back on

Television has no shortage of cop shows and procedural dramas -- some good, some bad, most on CBS. But with the summer here and fewer young people likely watching television, it's surprising that many networks are ignoring this staple formula for silly reality/competition type shows that run cheap but can't expect to pay off (save the odd Talent) like a scripted show does.

In watching the third season premiere of The Closer tonight (TNT/9 p.m.), I see why TNT gets so much credit for this one. Ignoring Standoff -- which is merely a regular season castaway -- The Closer, by my calculations anyway, is the only procedural crime drama cranking out new episodes at this time of year. And it's a pretty good one.

As this season opens, the LAPD's priority homicide division faces budget cuts that lead them to the loss of all overtime funding (join the club, detectives...) and the loss of one of their own to either retirement or transfer in order to save some extra cash. Deputy Chief Johnson's pretty busy with the murder of almost an entire family -- mom, dad and a 12-year-old girl -- while the 17-year-old son is found nearby and stoned off his gourd (homework: please explain this colloquialism to me).

This type of show isn't necessarily different than your everyday procedural with a brilliant leader (though this time it's a woman) and a team that mixes luck, intelligence, sneaky smarts and bumbling to get the job done. It's much more contingent on its writing than the others are, and, like House, needs that strong personality or it would fall right apart. Luckily, that writing is there and so is that personality. Without them, the show's core -- Johnson's interrogations that always seem to end her way, though she doesn't catch hell in the media like Jack Bauer seems to -- wouldn't be nearly as believable. It helps that the supporting cast has a good number of relatively strong personalities, too.

Seriously, if J.K. Simmons is in something it's worth seeing on principle.

If you're looking to fill the summer procedural void and CSI and House reruns aren't cutting it, this is a strong candidate for your time. I'd never caught an episode before for the simple fact that the idea of TNT, the network I used to go to for my Bugs Bunny fix as a child, couldn't possibly have put together a strong original scripted series. I was wrong.