Nothing fishy about Kaczmarek but the lens.

From Mom in Malcom in the Middle to black robes and the bench, Jane Kaczmarek premieres on TNT on Labor Day in Steven Bochco's new legal drama, Raising the Bar. She plays an arrogant, and slightly crazy, judge.

Her Malcom co-star, Bryan Cranston, has turned heads, starring in the AMC drama Breaking Bad, but it's a big change going from the 9-to-5 hours of toiling on a sitcom to the most demanding of the acting genres, TV drama, where the work can stretch to 16 hours, five days a week.

"Bryan loves it," she said to me over cocktails, "I love it every now and then." The veteran Bochco (Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, NYPD Blue) has worked things out, devising a schedule that calls her to work only two days a week, so she can spend time with her three young children.

Following Malcolm, she had enjoyed doing just that fulltime -- "breakfast, bedtime and everything in between" -- but her agent talked her back to work. " 'If you don't take a job soon,' she told me, 'you're going to stop being offered such great opportunities.' "

This is Kaczmarek's second legal drama. Equal Justice lasted a whole season in 1990-91. She got the part for that just as her pal, fellow Yale Drama School grad Chris Noth, was signing on to Law & Order.

"I wished him a lot of luck, but I thought my show would last much longer than his," Jane said.