The FOX Network has had success in recent years with dramatic programs that feature a bit of mystery, some suspense, and an eccentrically headstrong protagonist, as in House, 24, Bones, Lie to Me, and the like. The network’s new show Lone Star, which premiered last night, is in that vein—but alas, not as interesting or edifying.

The strength of those other FOX shows is the way they create tough moral choices for their protagonists and ensure that the viewer suffers along with the characters as they face these dilemmas, because the audience is made to care about them and even like them despite their annoying personal flaws. Those, unfortunately, are the weaknesses of Lone Star. The show does indeed deal with issues of personal responsibility, moral culpability, and the possibility of redemption, but ultimately it cheats on those concerns. And despite a clear effort by the showmakers to make the characters appealing, these are individuals few people will want to be around week after week.

The show is set in Texas and follows the adventures of Robert Allen (James Wolk), a con man living a double life with two wives who don’t know of each other’s existence. As noted, the producers try hard to make him someone the audience can like, in several ways.

One,  they make it clear that he has been dragged into this life by his father (David Keith) and really wants to quit. (A theme borrowed from Paper Moon and countless other conman stories.) Two, they show him having pangs of conscience about his scams and even trying to repay people whom he has harmed. Three, they show him as affectionate and loving toward his working-class girlfriend and seriously wanting to marry her even though he is already married to a beautiful, rich woman as part of his big scam. Fourth, he smiles a lot in his work of scamming people. Fifth, some unpleasant characters dislike him. And so on.

Yet I think it’s still very easy to avoid liking him, especially as we get toward the end of the episode. [Note: plot spoilers ahead.]

So, OK, he doesn’t seem so bad, just stuck in a life he never wanted, boohoo. Next thing we know, a superrich oil magnate named Thatcher (Jon Voight) offers Allen a job, and he wants to accept it “for real,” as he puts it, and go straight. Nice. Show’s over. Happy ending. Thanks; it was fun.

Wrong. Allen’s father, having gone to a good deal of effort to train the lad in the life of crime and seeing this job offer as the opportunity for a big score he’s been waiting for all of his life (another plot element derived from previous stories, movies, and shows, such as The Italian Job), won’t hear of it, and Allen goes along with his plan to take the job and clean the company out, potentially pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars.

Thatcher is very sinister, however, and one of his sons hates Allen. Thatcher’s other son is a good guy, however, which we know because he wants to waste the oil company’s money on wind farms. Allen encourages this idiocy for reasons of his own.

So, one might conclude that this big con is acceptable because two of the three top people in the company are meanies. Or one might conclude that the scam is outright thievery and morally reprehensible. Those who incline toward the latter will find that rather limiting their fondness for Allen.

So the producers try again to make us like him. Allen and his father are shown conning an elderly man out of S40,000 in a mineral rights scheme (I think that’s what it was), but instead of the usual triumphant cheeriness of most such portrayals, this show makes it look ugly and sad. The camera stays on the victim as he writes out his check, showing the rugged Texan’s trust as a good thing and casting the Allens as truly reprehensible. It’s the kind of scene one seldom sees in these stories, and it inspires a bit of admiration for the show’s producers and writers, if not for its protagonist.

The next scene is equally impressive, doing the same thing in regard to adultery, as Allen resists the temptation to engage in a one-night stand despite heavy temptation and a strong effort at persuasion by a very beautiful woman. A subsequent scene in which he helps a gas station attendant out of a jam created by the latter’s father reinforces the notion that Allen is truly good at heart but is stuck in the life of a conman because of his father’s overpowering influence.

Allen strongly argues that he really wants a simple, normal life, not the dream world of a big score his father wants for both of them. “This is about moving to an island of topless women,” his father insists. But when his father sees how important this chance at a normal life—albeit one of great wealth as an executive in Thatcher’s oil company—is to Robert, he relents.

But of course Allen’s father may well just be pretending to agree. In addition, after all his talk about going straight, Robert immediately starts stealing from his father-in-law’s company and marries his prior girlfriend, making himself a bigamist.

All of that certainly undercuts the previous redemptive talk. So he may be conning his father, his father-in-law, both wives, and everybody else. Who the real Robert Allen is, remains a puzzle at the conclusion of the pilot episode.

That makes it possible for the show to continue, of course, into subsequent episodes, and presumably creates an ambiguity that will keep viewers guessing as to Robert’s real motives and hence the moral quality of his decisions. But what it also does is make the character difficult to like and to want to be around week after week—and those latter characteristics are pretty much essential for series television success.

In the end, Lone Star suggests a sincere intent to explore the consequences and moral import of  its protagonist’s choices. Unfortunately, if people don’t enjoy seeing him week after week, all those good intentions will come to naught.