For some reason, many viewers seem to either dislike Katherine Heigl or be seriously ambivalent.
Heigl was quite pleasant when I met her on a set tour of Grey's Anatomy in the summer of 2006. And why not? She was 27 and flying high from her recent hugely popular story arc where her Dr. Izzie Stevens finally accepted the marriage proposal of Denny Duquette (Jeffrey Dean Morgan).
Then Denny died. Oh, the weeping and lamentation. Poor, poor Izzie.
Heigl earned a best supporting Emmy for the role in 2007 and starred in several successful movies, including Knocked Up (which she found "sexist"), 27 Dresses and The Ugly Truth. She was an ingenue whose career was looking up.
In 2010, she abruptly left Grey's Anatomy, ostensibly to spend more time with her family. She burned some bridges. She began to get the reputation of being rude and difficult to work with.
In the seven years since, Heigl has starred in the short-lived 2014 NBC spy thriller State of Affairs and in a handful of forgettable movies, including the horribly reviewed The Big Wedding opposite A-listers Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton, Susan Sarandon, Amanda Seyfried and Robin Williams.
That must have been humbling.
Now, Heigl is 38 and the mother of a newborn son and two adopted daughters. She is giving the small screen another shot, playing the lead in the new CBS legal drama Doubt. The series debuts at 9 p.m. Wednesday.
Heigl portrays idealist Sadie Ellis, a brilliant defense lawyer at a small firm who begins to fall for her earnest, charismatic client.
Billy Brennan (Steven Pasquale, Rescue Me) is a brilliant, altruistic pediatric surgeon who is accused of murdering his girlfriend 24 years before. He may or may not be guilty -- that's the "doubt" in the title.
Stealing every scene he's in is Dule Hill (The West Wing, Psych) as Sadie's brilliant (everybody's brilliant) colleague and friend Albert Cobb.
Laverne Cox (Orange Is the New Black, The Rocky Horror Picture Show) plays passionate, brilliant and sassy transgender lawyer Cameron Wirth. This is the first time a transgender character has been played by a transgender actress in a broadcast network series.
Bonus features: Elliott Gould (MAS*H, Friends) stars as Isaiah Roth, the brilliant head of the firm, and Judith Light (Who's the Boss?, Transparent) has a recurring role as Sadie's mother, Carolyn Rice.
The series breaks no new legal drama ground. I seriously doubt there has been any new ground to break since Perry Mason. But there is a chemistry between Sadie and Billy that might be worth exploring. And the zingers from Albert and Cameron are well worth the time.
I'm giving Doubt a couple of episodes to convince me to stick with it.
• Stranger Things. Season 2 of the Netflix hit will debut on Halloween. The science fiction/horror series starring Winona Ryder as divorced mother Joyce Byers is set in the 1980s. The first season revolved around the disappearance of Byers' 12-year-old son.
Season 2 will take place in 1984, about a year after the events of Season 1.
• Ew. I'll pass. Speaking of Netflix, it's new half-hour comedy Santa Clarita Diet has two good things going for it -- the still adorably ditsy Drew Barrymore (Never Been Kissed, Grey Gardens) and the hunky and talented Timothy Olyphant (Deadwood, Justified).
It also has two strikes -- it's not funny and it's disgusting. Yes, disgusting.
Regular readers know I have a high disgust threshold as evidenced by my championing of The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones. But Santa Clarita Diet has none of the socially redeeming qualities of those other series.
The skewed family sitcom follows the adventures of two married Santa Clarita, Calif., real estate agents. Joel (Olyphant) and Sheila (Barrymore) are the parents of a snarky teenage daughter (Liv Hewson) and all seem to be living the typically tidy suburban life until something, well, unusual happens.
For some unexplained reason, Sheila turns into a zombie. In a grossly bilious manner.
She's not the typical rotting, shuffling zombie. She has a healthy sex drive (overly so), and up until the final scene doesn't dive into her first human victim (guest star Nathan Fillion). But that scene is salaciously gory and serves little other than for shock value.
I'm told the series tones down the gore as it goes on. I just don't want to wade through the offal to get there. Ten episodes are available if your gag factor can take it.
The TV Column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Email:
mstorey@arkansasonline.com
Style on 02/14/2017