Crime dramas still in that awkward stage

It’s a Strained Premise Saturday on the Lifetime channel tonight, as Joely Fisher and Gloria Reuben star in back-to-back new series that are rather entertaining once you get past the awkward setups.

Fisher’s “Wild Card” (9 p.m.) is the better of the pair. In it, she plays Zoe 0Busiek, a Vegas blackjack dealer who is dealt a challenging hand when her single-mom sister dies in an auto accident, leaving three children in the lurch.

Zoe, who had led a freewheeling, jack-of-all-trades existence in Sin City up to this point, pulls up stakes and sets off to care for the kids in suburban Chicago, her old stamping grounds. She’s got her work cut out for her: The 16-year-old girl (Vikki Krinsky as Taylor) has a wild streak a mile wide, and 12-year-old Clifford (Devin Drewitz in tonight’s pilot; Jamie Johnston takes over next week) is a sullen mess who blames himself for his mother’s death. Thank goodness the youngest (Aislinn Paul as 8-year-old Hannah) is a sweetie.

But Zoe can’t devote all her time to the kids’ problems because she’s in town about five minutes before she decides there’s something fishy about the auto accident that claimed her sister. Soon she’s racing around gathering evidence as only a casino veteran can, convincing a pair of investigators (Rae Dawn Chong and Chris Potter) not only to reopen the case but also to hire her as well. Watch out, Chicago, Zoe’s on the beat.

Tonight’s other Lifetime series, “1-800-MISSING” (10 p.m.), also is a crime drama, with Reuben playing hard-boiled FBI Agent Brooke Haslett. As you may have surmised by the title, Haslett’s job is tracking down folks who have disappeared for one reason or another, but as the show opens she’s not having much luck.

Fortunately, a young woman who lives nearby is struck by lightning while trying to persuade her suicidal brother to climb off a rickety bridge. The bolt somehow imbues Jess (Caterina Scorsone) with a weird sixth sense that enables her to see things in her dreams that are clues to all those missing people. She starts calling in tips to the police, and soon after the FBI comes knocking at her door, telling her she’ll be arrested if she doesn’t join the agency. That’s some recruiting pitch.

Jess is quickly matched with Brooke, of course, who bristles at being paired with this weirdo. The threadbare, partners-at-odds bit is a real clunker, and the hollow, one-sided bickering is almost as unpleasant as the ugly kidnapping at the core of tonight’s episode. The cryptic dream sequences are an interesting touch, though, and Reuben and Scorsone show glimmers of chemistry that may blossom once they inevitably graduate to the grudging admiration stage of their characters’ development.