Mysteriously missing; now back

Television is filled with crime, from the news to the newsmagazines to Court TV to the metastasizing franchises of “Law & Order” and “CSI,” but these are bad days for the old-fashioned mystery. The modern police procedurals and forensic dramas are limited, in a way, by their love of science and splatter and the rarer forms of human perversity -- they are soulless, or perhaps I mean antiseptic -- and in many cases are so colored with visual effects and slathered with gloss that they forfeit any claim on spiritually useful reality.

Then there is the old-school approach -- “genteel” is a word often used here -- the locked-room sort of mysteries attended by Sherlock Holmes and his various quirky progeny, from Philo Vance, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Peter Wimsey, Nero Wolfe, Charlie Chan, the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew on to M. Maigret, Adam Dalgliesh, Inspector Morse, Jim Rockford, Jessica Fletcher, Quincy (old-school forensics), Monk and so on, featured in stories in which the personality of the detective is as important as, or more important than, the crime or its solution.

These can be as fanciful as the procedurals can be mundane, but they are human dramas, or -- just as often -- comedies, built around character. The detectives are usually at least slightly eccentric (Monk is entirely eccentric); often they are not pretty, unlike, say, the “CSI” crowd and their increasing imitators. Murder is not always the crime of the day, but it mostly is, and the motivations are simple, few, classical, even biblical, and not ripped from the headlines: greed, jealousy, fear of exposure. Psycho killers need not apply.

Yet the single-detective show, in which a first-class mind goes up against one or another form of locked room -- once a staple of the network prime time -- has been notably missing from the air. “Monk,” which begins its fourth season on USA next Friday, has been carrying the ball nearly alone (except for the odd British import). Now the Hallmark Channel, in imitation of the old “NBC Mystery Movie” rotating series that at the dawn of the ‘70s introduced “Columbo,” “McCloud” and “McMillan and Wife,” is offering its own “Mystery Movies”: “McBride,” “Jane Doe” and “Mystery Woman,” airing in weekly rotation -- produced under the eye of Dean Hargrove, whose long career (spent exclusively in the genre) includes “Columbo,” “McCloud,” “Name of the Game,” “Matlock” and “Father Dowling Mysteries.” They are no “Columbo,” “McCloud” or “McMillan” -- they use recycled dialogue, and their budgets show, and none feels new in any way -- but each has its charms, and together they provide a good example of how cable can pick up and wave a standard that network television, in its ceaseless quest for the attention of the consuming young, has let fall.

Debuting tonight is “McBride,” in which John Larroquette plays a lawyer who, like Perry Mason, wins his cases by solving them. The role fits Larroquette like a glove -- more like a comfortable sweater, really, but one that hasn’t lost its shape. He has a calm, ironic authority that is most appealing. Larroquette gets the traditional complement of support: the requisite young assistant (Matt Lutz); the usual police liaison, who in this case is a woman with whom he carries on an intermittent affair (Marta DuBois); and a dog.

Next Friday comes the first of the “Jane Doe” films, which stars Lea Thompson (“Caroline in the City”) as a deductive genius pulled back from suburban motherhood to work for the crime-fighting National Security Council. It’s the weakest of the three, because it does not fully embrace the absurdity of its premises and propositions (the NSC has established a full-service command post beneath Thompson’s local grocery store, for instance). But Thompson, who acts a couple of notches above what the script requires, is an extremely attractive presence, and I am glad to see her anywhere at all.

Best of all is “Mystery Woman,” in which Kellie Martin plays an amateur sleuth. The program, which began its run last Friday, has as its executive producer Joyce Burditt, an old associate of Hargrove’s on “Diagnosis: Murder.” It shows its budget least; generates the most suspense; pulls some relatively glamorous guest stars, including Beth Broderick of “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” (I did say “relatively”); and has an excellent supporting cast, including Clarence Williams III (ex-”Mod Squad”), as Martin’s business associate, with a shadowy background in espionage (he is called “Philby,” as in Kim) and Nina Siemaszko (“More Tales of the City”) as Martin’s assistant-D.A. best friend. Best of it all it has Martin, who has the big eyes of a Keane painting, and conveys most convincingly the compulsive curiosity of a natural-born Nancy Drew.

*

‘McBride’

Where: Hallmark Channel

When: 9 tonight

Ratings: TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children)

John Larroquette...Mike McBride

Marta DuBois...Sgt. Roberta Hansen

Matt Lutz...Phil Newberry

Executive producer Dean Hargrove.