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"In Plain Sight" - U.S. new series on witness protection program - is suffering partly from unfortunate timing. After an impressive series of recent cable dramas - including two popular crime shows with strong female leads, TNT's "Saving Grace" and "The Closer" - this light-hearted female copshow feels stale and pointless, while falling short in the combination of drama and It ignites pleased that the U.S. "Burn Notice." Mary McCormack is as inconspicuous as the flawed, narration-heavy lead, and when "Sight" draws its own disappearing act, as the evidence, the investigation should be brief.

There is no polite way to say: McCormack plays half their scenes in a hoarse whisper, as if they were channelled David Caruso. Almost inexorably surly, they constantly bickers with her partner (Frederick Weller) and is in a constant state of despair with her flighty sister (Nichole Hiltz) and ditsy mother (Lesley Ann Warren, doubling up to their duty hot-mom in "Desperate Housewives ").

These elements remain the furniture in an otherwise simple procedural errors, with Mary McCormack's Shannon, the charge of another character in the program every week. These areas are mostly predictable, by the Mafia family in the extended, 76-minute premiere single sponsor for the child witness in the second episode. The third hour issues has improved somewhat, with "The Wire" Wendell Pierce as the patriarch of a suburban family reluctantly thrust into danger.

As written by David Maples, the opener discards a little bit of everything tonally, including volatile grisly images of a corpse and fake an orgasm Mary on the phone to fool a suspect. A large part of the dialogue sounds copshows heats from the past, from "You are the branches, criminals back on the road" to "How can someone who burns so hot, so cold?"

Balancing comedy and drama within this kind of environment requires a delicate touch, and precious little about "In Plain Sight" the balance achieved. Weller does manage a few nice moments of working with small bits as his character is strange language, but nobody else seems - handicapped by either writing or cliched overlooked in the series focuses on his pretty-Gal-can-be-Tough protagonist . (The series has a certain promotional heft of "Dancing with the Stars" finalist Cristian de la Fuente, albeit in a relatively small supporting role.)

McCormack has done good work elsewhere (in the last seasons of "The West Wing" comes to mind), but unfortunately there's not much that is memorable about Mary.

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