It could live up to its potential

It’s nice to see Carla Gugino, briefly of “Spin City” and “Chicago Hope,” back on television in, and as, “Karen Sisco,” a pretty good new series premiering tonight on ABC. (Now I won’t have to rent “Spy Kids” every other weekend.)

What sets Miami-based federal marshal Sisco apart from TV’s other extremely good-looking women-with-guns, present and past, is that she’s based on a character played by Jennifer Lopez in a hit movie -- Steven Soderbergh’s “Out of Sight” -- based on a book by Elmore Leonard. She is a woman-with-a-gun with a pedigree. Gugino’s take on the character is not much different from J. Lo’s, without being in any sense an imitation. She’s tough-minded when it comes to her job, a bit dumb about men, and has an excellent relationship with her father. As in the movie and book, she’s got a pistol in her purse, a taste for bourbon and a habit of exceeding the exact bounds of her assignments.

Like Leonard’s novels, which, for all their low-life grit, are romances, the series amiably blends fantasy and authenticity. Though Karen -- the only woman on view, most of the time, and the place your eyes are meant to fall -- lives in a world of familiar emotional detail, works a not particularly glamorous job, and carries all the right equipment, the kicky-fun swinging-’60s credits, creamy visuals and retro-now soundtrack signal that we are a step outside the real world. Her professional foremothers are Honey West, Christie Love and whichever of Charlie’s Angels you care to choose. (Well, maybe not Jill.) The spirit of Mary Richards is hovering somewhere nearby as well.

The criminal element is at once crucial and incidental: It’s what gets these characters out of bed, but even Karen’s professional relationships -- with her gruff and protective boss (Bill Duke), with the sundry cops or robbers she likes or who like her -- are portrayed as personal. All that matters ultimately is what happens to Karen.

Robert Forster -- one or two of you may remember his 1972 detective series, “Banyan” -- plays her father, a nice bit of casting, given that he was rescued from obscurity by the movie “Jackie Brown,” based on Leonard’s “Rum Punch.” An impassive actor, he can sometimes look stiff and yet make stiffness read as world-worn wisdom. Here he’s a semi-retired private investigator who investigates the sort of things private investigators actually investigate, kibitzes his daughter about her love life, and plays poker with ex-cons, which marks him as a man who takes everyone by their true measure. As it is Karen’s fate to be eternally unlucky in love, he will be her steady. They talk on the phone, meet for lunch, sometimes dodge the same bullets.

There is potential here for an ongoing good time; my reservations, which are slight but stubborn, are based on the distance between the excellent pilot episode, which runs two weeks from now, and tonight’s somewhat less excellent episode, which is not quite as sharp, sprightly or funny, or as profitably full of real Miami locations. (The disappearance of Jake Busey as a fellow agent is also disappointing.) Based on a Leonard short story called “Karen Makes Out,” it plays a little too much like a trial run for “Out of Sight.” (It is, essentially, “Out of Sight” upside-down.) Next week’s episode will guest star executive producer Danny DeVito and wife Rhea Perlman in a bit of first-strike stunt casting that may make clear the series’ comic potential -- right now, it’s a shade more serious than it needs to be, or perhaps it’s just that the jokes aren’t working.

Scott Frank, who adapted “Out of Sight” and Leonard’s “Get Shorty” for the big screen, is on board as an executive consultant, and hopefully will help to keep things real, but not too real.

*

‘Karen Sisco’

Where: ABC

When: Wednesdays, 10-11 p.m.; premieres tonight

Rating: The network has rated the show TV-PGLSV (may be unsuitable for young children, with advisories for coarse language, sex and violence).

Carla Gugino...Karen Sisco

Robert Forster...Marshall Sisco

Bill Duke...Amos Andrews

Executive producers Danny DeVito, Michael Shamberg, Stacey Sher, John Landgraf, Bob Brush and Michael Dinner. Director (tonight’s episode) Michael Dinner. Writer (tonight’s episode) Bob Brush.