Jeff Goldblum's Midseason Replacement Detective Series Raines Has Potential

"Raines" is a new cop show that came out on March 15, 2007. It stars Jeff Goldblum as the walking-wounded detective of the title, who has started to see and hear the victims whose murders he investigates.

So, is it any good? Actually, it is.

The idea of damaged members of law enforcement solving cases through talking to dead people is not at all new. And Jeff Goldblum is not the first film star to try a television show to revive his career. "Raines"' main rival, after all, is "Shark", starring James Woods intent on doing exactly the same thing for his career as Goldblum.

That said, the writing is sharp and funny, well suited to Goldblum at his sardonic best as the depressed detective. At the end of the episode, when a nosy cemetery groundskeeper asks him whom he was just talking to, Raines coolly replies, "The dead. They feed on human brains. The feast begins at sunset." It's a classic Goldblum type of line that comes totally out of left field. The story does that from time to time.

The backstory is that Raines was shot months before with his partner while on a case. He's back from medical leave and still the worse for wear. Raines' boss and colleagues are concerned about him, but they're willing to let him stay on the job in peace as long as he seems able to cope. So far, he is coping, though not that well. Goldblum plays Raines as a sad nice guy who has a good social network, rather than the usual antisocial loner that we too often see in these shows. He even interacts reasonably with an annoying uniformed officer (Dov Davidov) with whom Raines butts heads. At 54, Jeff Goldblum is looking pretty gray, but that helps his believability in the role rather than hurts it.

Even better, this isn't just a star vehicle for Goldblum. The supporting players, including Mykelti Williamson (Boomtown), Linda Park (Enterprise), Matt Craven (also Boomtown) and Nicole Sullivan (Scrubs), are not your usual jerk friends and colleagues. Sometimes, they even get some good lines of their own. At one point, Raines calls Sullivan's character and admits that she was right about an aspect of the case. "Don't say 'I told you so," he adds. "I told you so," she snarks amiably right back.

Alexa Davalos, as Raines' first victim, hits the right notes in her role. Hers isn't a new type of character (girl next door who's really a cynical hooker with a heart of gold). But the motivation behind her murder is drawn with finer psychological detail that you usually see in today's detective shows. A plus of the format is that Davalos gets to shift her personality (sometimes radically) as Raines discovers new things about the victim. It also keeps things fresh for Goldblum, since Raines has a new "partner" every week helping him solve his cases.

But this central idea of the story is also where "Raines" needs some work. For a start, it's not new, as the producers admit by bringing in Mykelti Williamson. Williamson played "Fearless" in "Boomtown", a cop and Gulf War veteran who frequently sees the ghost of an old war buddy. In Canadian police procedural "Da Vinci's Inquest", the title character, a coroner (Nicholas Campbell), frequently talks to the bodies he examines and claims, "I speak for the dead." In later seasons, one of Da Vinci's friends, tightly wound homicide detective Mick Leary (Ian Tracey), begins to hear voices and becomes convinced that he receives "premonitions" during some cases. Goldblum's deadpan approach even resembles Tracey's sardonic, off-kilter performance as Leary (not that that's a bad thing). There are also shows currently out there, like "Medium", based on the idea of people solving cases with the help of ghosts.

The makers of "Raines" insist that their hero's "ghosts" are really just Raines' hallucinations, visual markers of his thought process as he works through the case. Fair enough, but it doesn't entirely work because the makers continue to flirt with the idea that the ghosts just might be real. For example, Davalos' prostitute character at one point goes vampy on Raines, several scenes after Raines has come to a gentler view of her. Raines even asks her about this and there are scenes throughout the show where she continues to challenge his positive view of her, as if she wants him to go back to seeing her as a whore. If this is just Raines' subconscious mind talking to him, what's the motivation for reverting to a hostile view of this victim?

Second, the victim's ghost disappears once Raines has resolved her issues on earth, but not before he has closed the case for himself. If she's just a figment of his imagination, surely she wouldn't disappear until he had resolved his own issues with the case. There is also a spooky moment at the end when Raines discovers the song "Someone To Watch Over Me" on a CD of the victim's favorite songs. This comes across as a weird sort of reassurance from beyond the grave that the victim is now at peace. The song choice is cheesy, but when Raines gets teary-eyed, Goldblum still sells it.

Overall, this isn't a bad pilot at all. It has some rough edges, but the writing and Jeff Goldblum's performance make it watchable. As a midseason replacement opposite "Shark", though, it probably doesn't have much of a chance in the ratings. Check it out before it gets canceled.