'Medium' off to a ho hum start

Paranormal police show Medium (TV3, 9.30pm tonight) is well-named. The new American drama from NBC, starring Patricia Arquette as a clairvoyant crime solver, is neither stone cold nor sizzling hot.

As far as murder mysteries go, last week's opening episode was ho hum - you certainly didn't need to hold a seance to predict where Arquette's spookily gifted character, Allison Dubois, was heading.

Despite its second sight, Medium does not go where no other cop show has gone before. Allison is the direct descendant of The Profiler's Sam Waters, who had uncanny ability to see into the mind of the killer when she visited a crime scene.

Still, it is early days and Medium's first episode did have a lot to get through. It started with the cryptic insistence that "Allison is real ... really". A quick consultation with the crystal ball (oh, all right then, the internet) revealed the show is based on real-life psychic and police helper Allison Dubois who is a consultant on the show.

The action began with the fictional Allison's bad dreams - we learned that among that sector of humanity who "see dead people", she is a special subcategory: she sees dead people who have been victims of heinous crimes and are seeking justice. Sometimes she has to host a whole bunch of the bygone ones milling round the foot of her bed.

As a fellow medium tells her, "Even among the special, you're special".

Oh no, just what television needs - another chosen one, another kickass female with the mysteriously appointed task of wrestling with angry spirits.

In her waking hours, however, Allison is a lowly clerk at the DA's office and an aspiring law student, treating her startled superiors to "theories" of what happened in cases from the special information she is receiving inside her head. Her "theories" are less than welcome.

Then there's her busy homelife as wife and mother of three with devoted husband Joe, who is a willing ear to her anxieties about her nasty dreams, spiritual visitations and whether or not she really wants to go law school.

Joe is a scientist, so took an experimental approach to the problem. He sent descriptions of her dreams to various law enforcement agencies, to see if any of them turned out to be real cases.

Bingo! Next thing Allison was on a plane to join the Texas Rangers in their attempts to nail a killer.

Here the show took a strange lurch into the humorous, as Allison tried to prove herself to a doubting sheriff and the boys, all of whom wore Stetsons, had moustaches and drove big black SUVs.

The Rangers were little more than caricature, the sparring dialogue between the sheriff and Allison something you would expect more from a romantic comedy than a policer. This could be because the show's creator is Glenn Gordon Caron, whose CV includes Moonlighting, famous for its prickly sexual tension and snappy lines between leads Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis.

But apart from trading one-liners with a Texan sheriff, so far Arquette's Allison is struggling to hold up the whole show alone.

Her Allison is muted and passive, except for the odd breakout scene in which she is suddenly confident and capable of taking a sassy line with the sceptics.

The drama's biggest question is not what Allison will make of her "I see dead people" gift, but whether Arquette will be able to pull off Medium's stylistic mix (part smart-talking police procedural, part low-key family drama) in what has so far been an oddly divided performance.

Another challenge for the busy Chosen One.