Rizzoli & Isles

It works as light summer drama, with lots of great banter between the women, and it works as cop drama, since it has put both of them in very dangerous situations at regular intervals. Best of all, though, it keeps peeling away layers on both characters.

With The Closer and Rizzoli & Isles, you're in the company of smart women who know how to laugh at themselves and close cases.

Their interaction is friendly, if mildly teasing, professional and catfight-free. This allows the show to have the relaxing, unchallenging pleasures of good fluff even when the premiere is actually going a bit heavy on the gore.

Mostly this show belongs to Harmon, once a key member of the "Law & Order" ensemble. She's likable and intriguing. That salvages an otherwise average cop show.

Rizzoli & Isles features a good dose of humor and a lean style of storytelling that's reflected in the fairly small core group with which we will apparently be working.

In the absence of an arcing narrative, the series wants us to accept as its mission of suspense the mystery of this crypto drag-king-meets-shopaholic friendship.

This derivative mish-mash apes countless TV series that have gone before. Badly. It's full of stereotypes and characters who are so fake they're flatter than your average low-budget cartoon.