TV Reviews : ‘Criminal Behavior’: It’s a Real Mystery

Fans of mystery writer Ross Macdonald may find some fun connecting the dots in the murky “Criminal Behavior” (based on Macdonald’s novel “The Ferguson Affair”), but those not acquainted with Macdonald or his book are likely to feel baffled and exhausted (at 9 tonight on ABC, Channel 7, 3, 10 and 42).

The production, starring Farrah Fawcett as a tough defense attorney and shot on the streets of Los Angeles, is tacky, hurried and over-plotted. It also features a laughable love scene that’s intended to be incendiary (between Fawcett and A Martinez as a cop who’s an irksome, romantic pest).

For the actress who made the estimable TV movie “Burning Bed,” this film represents a plunge into the abyss. Fawcett tries to give the story some quirky energy (she collects parking tickets and works out at home on a punching bag), but she and others (including Dakin Matthews, Cliff De Young and James Gammon as her jailbird dad) are no match for Wendell Mayes’ maddening script and Michael Miller’s potboiler direction.

This is precisely the kind of TV cop drama--all plot, clunky exposition and very little character development--that is so dated and out of touch with any social or viable reality that the effect is deadening, something you don’t realize till you try to shake it off.