Biggest crime is the script

Jennifer Finnigan breaches acting parole in Close to Home.

Maybe I have my priorities wrong, but as the suburban house went up in flames in the opening scenes of Close To Home (TV One, 9.25, last night) I couldn't help wondering: did the guinea pig survive?

Apparently not, although the two children and their mother cowering in the basement did, dragged out by firefighters amid slo-mo exploding fireballs and blowbacks, by far the most dramatic images of the whole episode.

Down the block, just by coincidence, "feisty" prosecutor Annabeth Chase was goo-gooing over her baby daughter on the eve of her return to work after 12 weeks of maternity leave. As the baby cried through the night, Annabeth turned to her husband and wailed, "I wanna be a mommy and I wanna work". I doubt whether she felt as eager the next morning when she had to haul herself into the office and express breast milk for storage in the fridge.

Now, the premise for this latest series from the bloated stable of Jerry Bruckheimer is that crime occurs close to home, perpetrated by the ones we lurve. Gee, that's new. In the case of this opening episode, it seems basement Mommy, name of Molly, had set the house on fire.

Annabeth (Jennifer Finnigan, whose CV includes a stint on The Bold and the Beautiful) was outraged. No mommy should get away with trying to kill her two kids ... but then Molly revealed that Kurt, her big bland husband, was abusive and had kept them locked in the house for two years. She had lit the fire to get out.

That seemed to be stretching credibility, in more ways than one, but what the hey, this is a new series on TV One, so it must be quality, right?

Annabeth and the cops visited the house, noting the flexiglass windows, the locks, the collar in the cellar ... "The creeps don't scare me," muses Annabeth, "the decent guys scare me."

Actually, the scariest character was Kurt's mom, a hag who hated her "trash" daughter-in-law and used to lock her little boy up in the basement when he was naughty. An obvious device to "explain" his misogyny but never mind.

Back at the office, Annabeth was marching around with flared nostrils and pursed little mouth, having crying jags in the toilets and, according to her boss, letting her hormones make decisions for her. Next thing, Kurt's got 25 years but how that occurred, legally, was a blur.

Research reveals that in this episode alone, there were eight serious breaches of the American criminal investigation procedure, let alone heinous crimes against the arts of script writing, acting and directing.

The simple truth is, your honour, watching this cloyingly sentimental debut was like serving a boring little mini-sentence, exactly 42 minutes long with 13 minutes of advertising. The characters lacked charisma, and the story's dramatic arc was more like a flatline, underpinned by far too much orchestral swelling.

And with a script that contained lines like, "There is no harder job in the world than being a working mom," this reviewer's TV set is now under a protection order.