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'Code Black': Adrenaline with a touch of tragedy

Marcia Gay Harden stars as a hard-charging doctor who doesn’t let sorrow slow her down.

Marcia Gay Harden, center, in "Code Black." (CBS)
Marcia Gay Harden, center, in "Code Black." (CBS)Read moreTNS

* CODE BLACK. 10 tonight, CBS3.

I'VE ALWAYS had a weakness for TV doctors who do their jobs even when they're bummed.

Because TV doctors tend to be bummed a lot, and sick people shouldn't have to pay the price.

In CBS' "Code Black," Marcia Gay Harden stars as Dr. Leanne Rorish, who runs the residency program in the emergency room of very busy (and fictional) Angels Memorial Hospital.

She's a cowboy in the ER (her words) and we quickly learn, from an awkward bit of expository dialogue that takes place behind her back, that a "deeply tragic" accident three years ago helped make her that way.

To be honest, I don't really care. At least not yet.

But I do like watching Harden do her thing in this fast-paced show, inspired by ER physician Ryan McGarry's 2013 documentary - also called "Code Black" - about the Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center ER where he did his residency.

Although "code black" apparently means different things at different hospitals (or TV shows), in this one it means the hospital's staff is overwhelmed.

At Angels Memorial, we're told, this condition occurs 300 times a year. Maybe there should just be a code for slow days.

Harden's character has a partner in crime in senior ER nurse Jesse Salander (Luis Guzman), who's introduced to new residents as "your mama" and tells an exhausted but functioning Rorish that she looks as if she's been strapped to the bow of a ship.

Raza Jaffrey ("Homeland," "Smash") plays an ER doc who worries that Rorish is taking too many risks, and Bonnie Somerville ("NYPD Blue"), Melanie Chandra, Benjamin Hollingsworth and Harry M. Ford play four new residents from four very different backgrounds.

"Code Black" has a number of executive producers, McGarry among them, and though some would probably be happy to have the show compared to the long-running "ER," there are signs that others may be thinking a bit too much of "Grey's Anatomy."

If the show lasts, we'll have time to get to know the individual tragedies of the Angels Memorial staffers, so there's no need to burden the pilot with all that clunky exposition.

Better to hand Harden a scalpel and let her get to work.

'Bones,' 'Sleepy Hollow'

The ability to hit the reset button, even for a couple of episodes, can be one of the things that separates long-running shows from their short-lived competition.

As "Bones" returns tomorrow for Season 11 and "Sleepy Hollow" for Season 3 (8 and 9 p.m., Fox 29), they're resetting like crazy.

In the first installment of a two-parter, "Bones" finds Brennan (Emily Deschanel) and Booth (David Boreanaz) free of the jobs that brought them into contact with all those dead bodies and reveling in their second child (whose Flyers bib is a nod to the Philly roots the character shares with Boreanaz).

Don't worry. It won't last, and the dead bodies? As grisly as ever.

"Sleepy Hollow," though, offers a way in for newbies, last season's finale having dispatched of the show's major (and wildly complicated) story line as Sleepy Hollow police lieutenant Abbie Mills (Nicole Beharie) and Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison) delivered the world from evil.

As Season 3 opens, Abbie, now with the FBI, gets a call that Ichabod, still a man living in a time not his own, has wandered into trouble with a different federal agency.

Demon fighting won't be far behind, but the charm of "Sleepy Hollow" lies in its willingness to make mincemeat of American history to serve its own crazy ends and in the relationship of two characters who make no sense together and even less apart.

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