Damages, a legal drama that premiered last week on the FX cable network, follows the now customary FX approach of putting a veneer that is at once glossy and gritty on a basically conventional genre. In addition, like other FX shows, it looks very politically correct on the surface but underneath it all is much smarter than that.

The show initially seems a throwback to the late 1960s and early ’70s, with big business figures portrayed as ruthless and indeed murderous, and a crusading attorney, played by Glenn Close, as the heroine. It manages to be both overly talky and absurdly melodramatic, as the grand self-images of several of the central characters threaten to make the show rather silly.

The producers, however, clearly knew what they were doing, and the grandiloquence is a setup for a much more sophisticated look at the legal profession, and in particular the modern-day game of trawling for big bucks through personal injury and class action lawsuits directed against the "big pockets" of major corporations. Of course, such corporations have powerful legal teams, so the plaintiff’s bar can seem at first to be public-spirited crusaders.

But only to the irredemably naive. 

The show becomes more interesting and sophisticated as the premiere episode progresses. The main innovation is that Close’s character, an immensely wealthy tort lawyer whose specialty is class action suits against deep-pocketed businesses, is every bit as scoundrelly as any of the defendants she attacks, and perhaps more so.

The narrative slowly reveals just how manipulative and ruthless she really is, and her actions soon belie her claims of public-spiritedness. She is immensely wealthy, hugely powerful, and ambitious for more of each.

Damages, in short, is no Erin Brockovich, no simple left-wing morality tale in which one side is basically selfless and goodhearted and the other is entirely greedy and irresponsible. Damages is a much more balanced look at its characters’ choices, and hence a great deal better in artistic terms.

The show’s willingness to depict the moral failings and indeed crimes on both sides of these high-stakes legal games is laudable, and if Damages continues in this direction, viewers might just learn something about how our legal system really works. Now that would be something.