A plug for ABC's cable-ready 'American Crime'

* AMERICAN CRIME. 10 p.m. Thursday, 6ABC.

TOMORROW night, ABC will try to get away with much more than murder.

Moving into the time slot where Viola Davis ruled in a deliriously over-the-top, hashtag-friendly mystery that wrapped up its first season last week, is "American Crime," an 11-episode limited series that is, apparently quite deliberately, neither of those things.

Created at ABC's behest by John Ridley, whose commission came before his Oscar for writing "12 Years a Slave," "American Crime" starts, as so many TV dramas do, with the discovery of a body.

An Iraq War veteran named Matt Skokie has been murdered in his Modesto, Calif., home and his wife, Gwen, attacked and left comatose.

His father, Russ (Timothy Hutton), flies in to identify his son. His mother, Barb (Felicity Huffman), long divorced from Russ, arrives not long after and quickly jumps to the kind of conclusions that the show seems most interested in unpacking.

In the pilot, which Ridley also directed, and in subsequent episodes, we're introduced to a group of potential suspects, in some cases meeting their families, too.

Everyone has a story.

We've seen this, too, in such cable shows as "The Killing," but the backstories in "American Crime" aren't mere red herrings.

Hutton and Huffman turn in challenging, heartbreaking performances, the kind that lead to red carpets. They're not alone.

It's assumed we might want to know what star-crossed lovers/drug addicts Carter Nix (Elvis Nolasco) and Aubry Taylor (Caitlin Gerard) are experiencing; that we'll feel as much for teenage Tony Gutierrez (Johnny Ortiz) and his hapless, controlling father, Alonzo (Benito Martinez), as we do for the Skokies, whose son's life may be a greater mystery to them than his death. Gwen has parents, too (Penelope Miller and W. Earl Brown), who find themselves divided in crisis. Even Hector Tontz (Richard Cabral), whom we first see using Matt Skokie's stolen credit card, may have a story worth knowing.

Filmed in an intimate style that sometimes favors the noise of a nearby highway or a cash register over Mark Isham's score, and dwells on but doesn't overexplain details like Aubry's collection of magazine pictures featuring idealized interracial couples, "American Crime" is aimed squarely at drama junkies. Especially those who, tired of having their thoughts and emotions prechewed, packaged and set to music, may have fled broadcast TV for cable, Netflix and Amazon.

It's also part of a larger campaign by Paul Lee, ABC's British-born, Oxford-educated entertainment chief, who's made "reflecting America" his mantra, and who this season expanded racial and ethnic diversity well beyond the shows produced by "Scandal" creator Shonda Rhimes.

Rhimes' shows are remarkable for their matter-of-fact diversity. Shows like "Fresh Off the Boat," "black-ish" and "Cristela" promote the universality of family experiences while highlighting individual ones.

Because we're used to discussing race and ethnicity in the context of violence, "American Crime" might come off as more of the same, were it not for its sharp focus on its characters, and on the limits of parenting.

Barb Skokie and Alonzo Gutierrez have more in common than either dreams. Each has cherished certain beliefs about America and has sought to protect a son whose deceit can't help but take them by surprise.

In scenes that take place in interrogation rooms and law-enforcement offices, the justice system is kept at arm's length, a machine that began turning with the 9-1-1 call and will leave survivors and suspects alike chafing at their lack of control.

"American Crime," which conceivably could become an anthology series in the style of HBO's "True Detective" or FX's "American Horror Story," crosses no obvious broadcast boundaries, but is it language or nudity that distinguishes a cable or online drama? Or is the confidence that viewers have come to it deliberately, rather than having been lulled into it by a trick of scheduling?

Ridley, in a brief post-news-conference interview in January, noted that audiences are changing.

"They're sharper, they want more, how they digest material has changed and just patterns have changed," he said. "So the concept of an audience being ready for this kind of storytelling - and look, we're not the first ones here in that regard - is something that certainly gives me hope.

"Look, whether it's television, whether it's cars, whether it's phones, you know, the people up top are always looking and say, 'What is the marketplace ready for?' And I would give a lot of praise to ABC because they're not waiting and waiting and waiting for that to arrive.

"They're saying, 'Now's the time to make those changes and try things and get some impact,' " Ridley said.

"I'm very fortunate to be here in this space. Not just working in any regard, but to be at ABC where they allowed me to try a lot of things."