Lone Star

This fall's best and most original drama taps a gusher of intrigue and twisty romance, with star-is-born James Wolk the most irresistible con man since Lost's Sawyer.

There's exactly one hour left for a fall TV show that tells its tale in a deliberate, well-written and subtly acted way. That one hour belongs to Fox's Lone Star.

What I like about Lone Star, what could make it the strongest TV newcomer of the season, is the ways in which it differs from classic nighttime melodramas. The show is as much a bittersweet character study of con man Bob Allen as it is a new spin on the Ewings.

Lone Star has enormous potential to be a complicated, tightrope-walking tale of two lives. Or it could just implode. Like "The Event," it's worth your investment, but you'll have to record one or the other.

Rather than titillate you with how dangerous Bob's life and position are, the show focuses on how sad, and oddly romantic, his torn-between-two-lovers situation is. And in the pilot, at least, it doers a very good job.

Fox's beguiling but unconventional drama Lone Star will have a similar problem [programmers with quick trigger fingers] if viewers demand a quick payoff.

So where "Dallas" was happy if we were appalled at almost every character, Lone Star depends on us coming to like most of them, including Bob. The problem is that he's not a guy who got drunk one night and wrecked someone's car on a joyride. He has spent his life stealing from people who thought he was their friend.