Canterbury talks tough, has nothing new to say

For those of us who consider the tough-talking dame battling fear and other demons to be among America’s most valuable natural resources, it’s been a pretty good year for television.

First there was the return of “The Closer” and Kyra Sedgwick’s personally fragile but professionally tough homicide detective. TNT also gave us “Saving Grace,” Holly Hunter as another dogged detective with personal issues, though these were more along the hard-bitten sex-booze-and-cigarettes line. Over at FX, Glenn Close and Rose Byrne paired on “Damages” to offer two sides of the same coin -- ambitious lawyers at different locations on the soul-selling spectrum.

With “Canterbury’s Law,” which debuts tonight, Fox has high hopes of joining the parade. Here’s Julianna Margulies, she of the impossibly arched eyebrows, returning to television after a long absence as Elizabeth Canterbury, a tough-talking, vodka swillin’, adulterous defense attorney who will stop at nothing to see justice done. Even as her own heart breaks and her personal life crashes in around her.

With veterans like Aidan Quinn (who plays her husband, Matt) and Ben Shenkman as Russell, her associate, riding shotgun and an especially poignant back story -- Elizabeth lost her young son six years earlier -- the show should have legs enough to keep up with the big girls.

Except it’s just terrible.

Honestly, I don’t know how else to say it. In this role, Margulies has neither the charisma to hold the screen in the many (quite unforgiving) close-ups she is given, nor the depth to make her character more than one note (angry), two at the most (angry and determined).

It doesn’t help that she is forced to wear super-tight suits with impossibly winged collars and say things like “eyes and ears on me, people,” or “I sleep . . . the sleep of the righteous.”

Denis Leary is one of the executive producers, and history has proven he knows how to make edgy seem effortless. Not so here. “Canterbury’s Law” is so self-conscious you can practically hear the narrative choreography: “Angry line, angry line, determined line, now clench, clench, turn.”

This may explain why creator David Erickson introduces us to Elizabeth’s husband, and marriage, via an argument during a ballroom dance class the two are taking. Frankly, I don’t know why he bothered giving Elizabeth a husband at all, except to make her adulterous, which I suppose is one way to show us how troubled she is. (Her habit of sloshing vodka around being the other.)

In the pilot, the wonderful Quinn is indefensibly wasted because all eyes and ears are on Elizabeth, who is busy throwing tantrums and breaking laws defending a mentally disturbed young man accused of killing a child. She alone believes in his innocence because, as she explains, she just “knows when someone is lying.”

Elizabeth (and the script) justifies every lawless action, though this is patently unnecessary since her nemeses -- the prosecuting attorney and the father of the victim -- are so clearly rotten they all but hiss and tie young women to train tracks. Elizabeth could blow up the courtroom and still be justified. Still, poor old Russell (Shenkman, where have you been hiding since your wonderful turn in “Angels in America”?) is forced to play conscience, with such winning arguments as “you can’t help anyone if you’re in jail.”

Like we haven’t heard that one before.

The problem is we’ve heard, and seen, all of it before. “Canterbury’s Law” is a Frankenstein’s monster of a dozen cop/law shows, a pale, lurching version of the flawed and fascinating women who are taking back television like so many modern Cagneys and Laceys. I remain convinced that you can never have too many tough-talking dames on TV, but they each have to bring something to the party. And these days, a tendency toward irritation and a half-empty vodka bottle just ain’t enough.

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mary.mcnamara@latimes.com

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‘Canterbury’s Law’

Where: Fox

When: 8 to 9 tonight

Rating: TV-14-LV (may be unsuitable for children younger than 14, with advisories for coarse language and violence)