A tired plot, but a convincing president

“Commander in Chief,” premiering tonight on ABC, offers Geena Davis as the first American Woman President. In a scenario more probable for now than the actual popular election of an American Woman President (or a black, Jewish, atheist, Asian American, etc., president), she gets the office by accident, when the White Male Republican President whose non-Republican Vice President she is dies of a cerebral hemorrhage. They say anyone can grow up to lead this great country, but restrictions do apply.

Indeed, the show grows out of the fact that a woman president remains a fantastic proposition here between the shining seas, a sensational notion. Creator Rod Lurie also wrote and directed the film “The Contender,” in which Joan Allen played a woman named to replace a dead vice president. He did not travel far to this project.

Tonight’s pilot episode, written and directed by Lurie, is vexing: Polished and lively, it is also simplistic, melodramatic and half-baked -- though it clips along nicely enough that you may not notice. First among the questions it raises but does not answer are why an intelligent registered Independent would give up the chancellorship of a major university to become the running mate of a Republican presidential candidate whose policies she did not endorse, and why she (as opposed to other qualified women more sympathetic to his policies) was asked in the first place. Just what these policies are exactly, no one says -- only that he has them, and that they are not hers.

Because of this political disparity, it is suggested to Davis’ character, Mackenzie Allen, that she resign in order to cede the top job to ultraconservative Speaker of the House Nathan Templeton (Donald Sutherland), a man “who makes Genghis Kahn look like Mahatma Gandhi,” in the words of one of Davis’ aides, and whom even the late president has characterized as a liar and a card cheat. And she is indeed about to resign -- of course, she doesn’t resign, or this would be an entirely different series -- when Sutherland ticks her off with a lot of sexist claptrap and inadvertently changes her mind. (“And there’s that whole once-a-month, ‘Will she or won’t she push the button’ thing,” Allen helpfully adds, at which point he makes a clumsy aside about menopause.) For a character we are to regard as something of a crafty politician, he appears to be something of a dope.

Hardly more politically acute than a Tom Clancy thriller, and often as corny, “Commander in Chief,” should probably be consumed in a like spirit, and with a certain lack of attention. If it has none of the crackling authenticity that “The West Wing” achieves at its best, it is not without its merits and moments. Davis and husband Kyle Secor (“Homicide,” “Veronica Mars”) are a first couple I can aesthetically endorse; they go well together. Formerly his wife’s chief of staff, Secor now has to get used to being a White House-husband, the first male first lady, bustled into his new pink quarters by assistant Kristen Shaw -- very funny in her brief time on screen. This is a domestic drama as well, and comes with three children, as yet barely glimpsed: There are teenage twins, as good looking as the genes of their parents would lead you to expect: a boy (Matt Lanter), who seems fairly liberal, and a daughter (Caitlin Wachs, “Cracking Up”), who seems fairly conservative. And there is much younger, pre-political sibling Jasmine Anthony, who brings the cute, asking her mother, “Will they put your face on the money?” Kids do say the darndest things.

That “Commander in Chief” works at all is due primarily to its excellent players, and especially to Davis, a movie star with a television pedigree (“Buffalo Bill,” “Sara”). Tall and with a jaw line as well defined as any word in Webster’s dictionary, she projects cool capability and a willingness to command: Even behind the great, glossy red pillows that are her lips, and which continually draw one’s eyes to the center of the screen, she is convincingly presidential. And as fantasies go, this is a pleasant one: a president who can think on her feet and express herself coherently, a leader who’s actually informed and in charge -- yet willing to listen! Incredible!

*

‘Commander in Chief’

Where: ABC

When: 9 to 10 tonight

Ends: TV-PG D L (may be unsuitable for young children with advisories for language and dialogue)

Geena Davis...Mackenzie Allen

Donald Sutherland...Nathan

Templeton

Harry Lennix...Jim Gardner

Kyle Secor...Rod Calloway

Ever Carradine...Kelly Ludlow

Caitlin Wachs...Rebecca Calloway

Matt Lanter...Horace Calloway

Jasmine Anthony...Amy Calloway

Executive producers: Rod Lurie, Marc Frydman, Dee Johnson. Creator: Rod Lurie. Writer and director (pilot): Rod Lurie.