Frances Grant: Potshot at the American way

A steep, hilly wilderness surrounds the upper middle-class suburb of Agrestic, California, home to dark new "sitcom" Weeds. Inside the "private community", things aren't too civilised either.

That suburban conformity is the target - or rather the deviancy which lurks behind the facade of conformity - is spelled out loud and clear in the show's theme tune, the ghastly 60s folk song Little Boxes. From the large but definitely ticky-tacky boxes, identical SUVs pour forth, identical people sipping their lattes or jogging with their iPods.

So far, so heavy-handed. Fortunately, Weeds has more going for it than its unsubtle approach and unoriginal territory of showing the cracks in the American Dream.

Its best feature is actor Mary-Louise Parker who plays the lead role of Nancy, a widowed soccer mum who has taken up selling pot to keep herself and two children in the style to which they are accustomed.

Parker takes this not-so-original character and turns her into a truly idiosyncratic person. And as ever with Parker's trademark slightly dreamy performance, she conveys there's a lot going in her character's head.

What makes Nancy particularly intriguing is the fine line she walks between sweetness and toughness, liberal intelligence and hypocrisy. In the opening scenes of last week's debut episode, she was petitioning the PTA to replace sodas with water and fruit juice in the school vending machines.

The woman who deals pot to the adults wants to deny the kids their sugar fix. One minute she's soothing her son's cut knee with a sticking plaster, the next she's coolly lying to her kids when a customer pages her: "I've got to go out for a minute ... some Neighbourhood Watch thing."

Nancy is part outsider, but also as much Mrs Consumer America as the rest of the aspirational Agrestic families.

Parker's performance is matched by a fine turn from Elizabeth Perkins as neurotic bitch and PTA tyrant Celia.

Her relationship with Nancy is at best "frenemy", she hates her fat tween daughter, spies on her other daughter with a hidden camera to see if she's having sex, and simmers with loathing for her cheating husband. She's as dry as the martinis she and Nancy scarf down in the kitchen - yet somehow she's marginally likeable.

Weeds is called a sitcom but there's no laugh track and the jokes are all dark digs at the American way. The most searing from last week was Nancy's teenage competition begging her for some product. He hadn't had such a run on his wares since the multiplex was showing The Passion of the Christ.

The closest to a sitcom character is Doug, her accountant, a city councillor and her best customer.

It's hard to tell whether Nancy's suppliers, the oh-so-sassy African-American family living in the inner city, are intended as a caricature of black stereotypes or actually are a stereotype. But in a nice poke at conservative America, these are the folk with the best family values.

Despite its uneven and too knowing tone, Weeds promises to flourish. This is Desperate Housewives, the dark and more daring version. The reality behind the shiny suburban facades is now well-worn territory, but Weeds looks set to draw some fresh hits from life in the moral dead zone of consumer paradise.