Mom and punishment

WE’VE seen it before -- the tension-filled prosecutor’s office, the female victim, the road to justice. Most of the time it happens in a big city, where the crimes are as impersonal as the people who solve them.

This fall, CBS and Jerry Bruckheimer Television, the network and production company that have made “procedurals” a household term, are sketching a different crime scene with “Close to Home,” a drama that will focus on punishment while it spins suburbia through the eyes of a young working mother.

It may not be the first time working moms have been portrayed on the small screen -- think “Police Woman” in the 1970s and “Cagney & Lacey” in the ‘80s -- but 27-year-old Annabeth Chase, a new mother with a perfect conviction rate as a prosecutor in the Indianapolis district attorney’s office, feels as unexpected a protagonist as the desperate ladies of Wisteria Lane.

“People can say, ‘Big deal. It’s a show about a mom and a prosecutor,’ ” said 26-year-old Jennifer Finnigan, who plays Annabeth. “Yes, people do it all the time, but it’s not shown all the time. So this sort of explores that ... sometimes impossible attempt at balancing the career life and personal life and trying to be great at both.”

The pilot episode begins with Annabeth’s first day back on the job and includes a telltale scene in which she is showing baby pictures to her boss, who quickly changes the conversation to the business at hand: a case involving a woman who has been arrested for burning her house down with her children in it. On the flip side is Maureen Scofield (Kimberly Elise), another prosecutor, who was promoted while Annabeth was on her 13-week maternity leave. Maureen comes across to her colleagues as a no-nonsense career woman who has no time or desire for a family of her own.

“There are external factors that feed into her work demeanor and the energy she brings into work,” Elise said of her character. “Like many women, she has found a way to compartmentalize that part of her life and do what she had to do and not let anybody see that thing that is inside her.”

Creator Jim Leonard and executive producer Jonathan Littman, who runs Bruckheimer’s television empire (the company has a record 10 shows on the air this season), set out to fashion a crime show that rips real cases from the headlines of suburbia.

“This show is not about the process of prosecuting somebody,” Littman said. “It’s about going into this world and examining why people do what they do. When you’re dealing with suburban criminals, it’s less about violent crime committed randomly and more about violent crime done very deliberately, which is the difference. Scott Peterson had to put real thought into killing his wife. It was not a crime of passion. It’s not random at all.”

The inspiration for Annabeth is Leonard’s wife, a university professor and mother of two.

“I watched her struggle with whether to work, whether not to work, how much to work,” Leonard said. “I watched her feel like no matter what she did, it probably wasn’t a complete and right choice. So when she was at work, she felt guilty that she wasn’t with the kids. When she was with the kids, she felt she wasn’t doing good enough work. She felt it much differently than I did. When I looked at the prime-time lineup, I thought about how I could do a show about a working mother and how I could heighten the stakes of that.”

In the real world, the two central actresses’ roles are reversed: Finnigan is engaged and has no children, unless you count her dog; Elise is the single mother of two daughters, ages 6 and 15. To relate to her character, Finnigan, who most recently starred in NBC’s “Committed,” spent a lot of time talking to working mothers about their experiences.

“Because I haven’t gone through this myself, I can only imagine how difficult it is,” Finnigan said. “So many women told me stories about breast pumping while being on a conference call in their office or going to the bathroom to pump in a stall. I love that the pilot starts at this particular time where the character is heightened emotionally. She’s hormonal, she’s still pumping, and it hurts her to leave her baby.”

For the 38-year-old Elise, who became a mother before her career took off, getting to know Maureen has exposed her to a different type of woman.

“It’s allowing me to get into someone else’s head space because we all know women like that who are just about their career and aren’t into family,” Elise said. “We don’t always get them. How can you not have children? There’s a sexist attitude that society has about women who choose to have a career.”

Maureen also happens to be African American, and one of the main reasons Elise was attracted to playing her is that, she said, the character is not defined by her race. In fact, Elise declined the part when the producers first approached her because she felt Maureen was one-dimensional. Once the writers explained Maureen’s journey, which included a complicated family life, Elise took the part.

“To be brought in to play a woman who has a secret, who has issues, who has good things and bad things about her and happens to be black is exciting,” Elise said. “Even on a ‘CSI,’ where you don’t get to know characters fully, for us to see a black or Asian forensic scientist is exciting. To take it to this next level, that’s what really got me interested.”

Leonard drew Maureen as an African American character, he said, partly because he found himself struck by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s life.

“For one thing, it’s true of the Indianapolis prosecutor’s office, where I spent some time, that a number of people are African American,” Leonard said. “And I wanted that partially because I’m fascinated with Condoleezza Rice, to be honest, somebody who’s dedicated themselves to work and career. And I like the idea of having a multiracial show so you can do racial issues without talking straight ahead about them. They just become part of the fabric of what you’re dealing with.”

Finnigan and Elise said they hope their characters will have a meeting of the minds.

“I like it when women are friends in the workplace,” Elise said. “You don’t have to be best friends and all that, but you can have respect for each other and you can cooperate. You think of somebody like Condoleezza Rice, and people don’t know that she figure-skates and she’s a brilliant pianist. You just think of that one shot that a cameraman got of her grimacing, and you can’t imagine that she might have some wine and kick her feet up. She’s a human being. Of course she does.”