Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

I'm sure I'm way behind on the commenting, since Lifetime showed the 2-hour premiere of "Blood Ties" Sunday night, and "The Riches" started on FX Monday night. However, I couldn't resist putting in my two cents' worth.

First, I've never read any of the Tanya Huff novels that apparently inspired the Lifetime series, so I don't know how faithful the series may or may not be to its source material. But once I got past the fact that the lead actress was someone I'd only seen before playing a pain-in-the-butt, wet-behind-the-ears, resistance fighter in some middle season of the very disappointing "Earth: Final Conflict", I quite enjoyed it.

First off, I just thought it was cool that the heroine, Vicky the ex-cop-turned-PI, is not only a relatively tiny little thing with a kick-ass attitude, but that she's also struggling with retinitis pigmentosa, and I hope that they don't try to minimize the difficulties of her increasingly limited vision in future episodes.

My closest friend in the ministry is legally blind (congenital detached retina problem, passed from mother to daughter), and that's a demographic that we don't often see represented among our TV heroes (good enough vision to fake it most of the time, but nowhere near good enough to drive, read small print, or -- as in Vicki's case -- be allowed to do the job you're really cut out for).

Second, there's the fact that they're not trying to make the heroine seem too young. She's a 30-something whose mother freaks out with worry about her dating life (or lack thereof). I absolutely adored the line in the premiere where she pointed out to the awfully cute vampire Henry that if they spent time together, most people would think she was robbing the cradle. (And yes, the older I get, the more I also appreciate those early "Highlander" episodes, where Tessa was mostly unconcerned about the fact that she looked a bit older than Duncan -- it's nice to see the over-30 women with cute, young-looking guys, sometimes, even if the guys are actually way older than they look.)

Then, there's the different vampire mythology, including the idea that vampires are so territorial that they can never share the same hunting grounds -- so even if Henry, the devastatingly pretty vampire from the court of Henry VIII now earning his living turning out graphic novels, WANTED to eventually turn Vicky, it's already been established that there is no "happy-ever-after" for vampiric couples.

And last, but certainly not least, there's Vicky's very tall and extremely handsome ex-partner, the police detective whose occasional over-protectiveness so gets her goat. I can definitely make time on my schedule for that much concentrated male cuteness -- especially if they continue to do two showings on Sunday nights, allowing me to choose between recording BSG off of Sci-Fi at 9 PM and "Blood Ties" off of Lifetime at 11 PM, or "Blood Ties" at 9 and BSG at 11.

As for "The Riches", it wasn't at all what I expected from the promos and from the fact that Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver were starring in it. There are comedic elements, of course, but there's much more drama, and far more soul-baring emotional moments than light-and-superficially-breezy scam-artist moments.

All told, it's a lot less fun, but a lot more potentially thought-provoking and addictive, than I had been led to expect from the way it was being marketed. Of course, I really do miss the days when a younger Eddie Izzard wore a dress and make-up -- I found him much sexier as a "male lesbian". But I'm sure I'll grow to like the beard, in time.