Psychic Housewife
The mother of all TV sleuths
If it weren't for all the dead people and creepy criminals she keeps seeing in her nightmarish dreams, Allison DuBois could be this generation's Samantha Stephens. The cranky psychic heroine of Medium is bewitched, all right. Bothered and bewildered, too. And she even has her own little Tabitha-like daughters who also have the "gift."
"I didn't want it and I didn't ask for it, and sometimes I wish I didn't have it," Allison (Patricia Arquette) whines during a rare fight with her usually supportive husband Joe (Jake Weber), who, like Darrin on Bewitched, sometimes just gets fed up with his wife's eccentricities.
Medium, inspired by the real-life DuBois' exploits, could so easily have been a comedy. In my favorite episode to date, Joe plotted feverishly to plan a birthday surprise for a woman "who's always one step ahead."
Instead, the show settles for being the year's most inventive twist on the ubiquitous crime drama. (CBS' Numbers is a near-tie.) When Allison isn't busy with Joe and their three kids, she's working as a secret weapon for the Phoenix district attorney's office.
Secret because if the DA let it be known that he was following leads from a psychic's dreams and visions, he'd be laughed out of a job.
Medium works on many levels. Arquette's edgy and deglamorized performance captures Allison's deep ambivalence toward her powers. The balance between realistically chaotic home life and dangerously surreal work life is entertaining and provocative.
Now if only Allison would start twitching her nose....