When I watched ABC’s “Body of Proof” pilot last summer, lead character Dr. Megan Hunt (Dana Delany) came across as a fairly unsympathetic, cold character. Eight months later, Hunt seems less shrill. Is that because I know what to expect — or because of tweaks made to the pilot episode?
| On TV |
| ‘Body of Proof’ |
| When: 10 p.m. Tuesday |
| Channel: ABC |
Either way, “Body of Proof” (10 p.m. EDT Tuesday) seems less likely to drive viewers away, at least not viewers content with whodunit procedurals. “Body of Proof” fits neatly and blandly in that tired category.
The show benefits from a strong central character played by the always-engaging Delany. In some ways, Hunt brings the actress full circle. The good doctor is closest in temperament to nurse Colleen McMurphy, the character Delany brought to life in the excellent, late-’80s ABC drama “China Beach.” But where “China Beach” was a serial, “Body of Proof” is a paint-by-number episodic.
A body turns up, Philadelphia medical examiner Hunt and medical investigator Peter Dunlop (Geoffrey Arend) show up at the crime scene and bump heads with police detectives Samantha Baker (Sonja Sohn, “The Wire”) and Bud Morris (John Carroll Lynch), then Hunt begins her own sleuthing, eventually ruffling feathers at her workplace and catching flak from her boss, Dr. Kate Murphy (Jeri Ryan, “Star Trek: Voyager”), before solving the case by the end of the hour.
If it sounds like “Quincy” or “Crossing Jordan” or “Rizzoli & Isles,” that’s because it is like those predecessor series.
In Tuesday’s premiere, viewers learn about Hunt’s past. She was a top neurosurgeon until she was injured in a car accident. After that, she tried to operate again but wound up killing a patient. Now she’s a medical examiner, she says, because, “You can’t kill somebody if they’re already dead.”
On top of that, Hunt has a frosty relationship with her ex-husband and she’s somewhat estranged from her teenage daughter.
It’s understandable that the powers behind the series would want their lead character to be less off-putting. As a viewer, I wanted to like Hunt more than I initially did. The problem with toning down Delany’s character is that it means diluting the only thing that distinguishes “Body of Proof” from all the other crime procedurals, and what’s left is a generic show with an above-average star.
