'Murder in the First' and 'De Niro, Sr.' lead new TV offerings

Police-procedural maestro Steven Bochco's latest offering, Murder in the First, which premieres 10 p.m. Monday on TNT, does away with some of the usual conventions.

Like Bochco's brilliant 1990s experiment, Murder One, it avoids the murder-a-week format, opting instead to cover a single homicide investigation through the course of its 10-episode first season.

Starring Taye Diggs and Kathleen Robertson as San Francisco homicide detectives Hildy Mulligan and Terry English, the story also spends an unusual amount of time exploring the cops' personal lives. She's a single mom; he's a devoted husband whose wife is dying of cancer. (Now, that is a seriously rich mine of character clichés.)

Murder in the First does have a compelling storyline and good performances, but despite its attempts to be unique, it's really not all that distinctive or distinguished.

The story opens when Hildy and Terry are called out to a fleabag motel to investigate the murder of a middle-aged drug addict.

Their interests are piqued when they find a tablet in the room with a recently composed blackmail note to Erich Blunt, one of Silicon Valley's youngest, richest, and most powerful entrepreneurs. Turns out the dead dude was the kid's father.

Things get more complicated when Blunt's personal flight attendant (he has his own jet, naturally) is found dead. Blunt killed both victims, surely?

Tom Felton, so good as the serpentine Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter series, does a fine job as Blunt, a brilliant sociopath who has the biggest God complex since the Old Testament.

Murder in the First may not be the usual workaday cop show, but it's hardly in the same class as The Killing or True Detective.

HBO pays homage to Robert De Niro Sr., a fascinating if almost forgotten painter - and the father of the acclaimed actor - with Perri Peltz's documentary Remembering the Artist Robert De Niro, Sr., premiering Monday at 9 p.m.

The elder De Niro, who died in 1993 at 71, was a figurative expressionist painter who came out of the closet as a gay man when his son was three.

He was a successful part of the New York School of artists in the 1950s, but left New York for Paris in the 1960s when abstract expressionism and pop art defined the art world.

Though the actor is a deeply private man, Robert De Niro Jr. is open, frank and touching as he recounts his father's life and work on-camera.

This is a rare treat.

White Collar creator Jeff Eastin's gritty thriller Graceland, starring Daniel Sunjata and Vanessa Ferlito, returns for a second season at 10 p.m. Wednesday on USA Network.

Remembering the Artist Robert De Niro, Sr.  

9 p.m. Monday on HBO.

Murder in the First

10 p.m. Monday on TNT.

Graceland

10 p.m. Wednesday on USA.

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