BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- The folks at FX seem to have a thing for cold, calculating, powerful women. First they unleashed Courteney Cox in the disappointing "Dirt," and now Glenn Close is glaring her way through "Damages" (commercial-free premiere 10 p.m. July 24) as high-stakes litigator Patty Hewes.

	Larry Riley, FX Glenn Close stars as Patty Hewes in the legal thriller "Damages," premiering on July 24 at 10 p.m. on FX. Click photo for larger image. Tuned In Journal More coverage from the TV critics summer press tour, including HBO news, can be found in Tuned In Journal at www.post-gazette.com/tv.

Close's Patty is tough, demanding, unsentimental and possibly a sociopath.

In the premiere episode, she hires a young law school grad, Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne), who's glimpsed in the first scene of the pilot, six months in the future, covered in blood. Did she kill someone? Did Patty drive her to it?

Future episodes may provide some answers in this mystery-laced drama that follows Patty's firm and its efforts to win a huge class-action settlement on behalf of the former employees of billionaire Arthur Frobisher (Ted Danson).

A highly serialized thriller, "Damages" is certainly a better show than "Dirt," and even in this first hour it's clear that Patty has more depth than, say, Close's Cruella De Vil, but all the orchestrated deceptions and double-crosses push "Damages" into a soapier, less artful territory.

While the characters on FX's "The Shield" come across as living, breathing, credible human beings, the "Damages" characters exist in a heightened, less realistic setting. But they do have more complexity and greater mysteries about them than characters on plenty of other programs.

"We don't look at any of the characters as good or bad," said executive producer Daniel Zelman, the husband of actress Debra Messing. "What really motivated us to write about this world was our interest in power dynamics. ... Power becomes a tremendous burden and will have a tendency to force people to do compromising things. We're interested in seeing how far we can push these characters and discover for ourselves what they're willing to do and what they're not willing to do."

Close said she was drawn to the series by the script and the chance to work with FX again after a season-long stint on "The Shield." In initial drafts of the script, her character was still on her first marriage, but Close didn't believe that made sense given the intensity of the Patty Hewes character.

"I felt with the kind of compulsion and ambition a character like Patty has, it would be extremely difficult to maintain your first marriage, and so it became her second marriage," Close said. Her character also comes into conflict with her teenage son. "She has spawned a child who can give it back to her the way she gives it to everybody else. He's a smart kid who's already a master manipulator."

Close said she's especially fond of the small, private moments the show depicts.

"A character like this is so in control, it's rare they can let it down, let their emotions out. It's too costly, and it's not good leadership," she said. "So I love when you see me on the phone with my son and how I privately react when I put the phone down. It's a private moment the audience will see and no one else in the story is aware of, and it adds to the complexity of the character."

'Nip/Tuck' on the move

At the end of the last season of FX's "Nip/Tuck," plastic surgeons Sean McNamara (Dylan Walsh) and Christian Troy (Julian McMahon) picked up stakes and moved from Miami to Hollywood to start anew.

Series creator Ryan Murphy said he initially pitched the show with a Beverly Hills setting and decided to revisit that initial concept for the fifth season, airing in October.

"The one thing we wanted to do by moving the show to L.A. was to explore the theme of L.A., which is people who come to this city, as I did, to reinvent themselves, and go after their dreams," he said. "It's the idea of hitting 40 and going from big fish in a small pond to the opposite."

Sean and Christian will be competing with more plastic surgeons than they ever have before, and they'll get jobs as medical consultants on a "Nip/Tuck"-like series called "Hearts & Scalpels," which Murphy describes as "the worst medical show ever made." Supporting characters -- including Liz (Roma Maffia), Matt (John Hensley), Kimber (Kelly Carlson) and Julia (Joely Richardson) -- will also make the move west.

"We parcel it out through the first three or four," Murphy said. "We do get everybody here, and we make it all make sense, I hope, why they are here."

Lifetime series

Lifetime scored this summer with "Army Wives," the breakout cable hit, and the network has renewed it for a second season of 18 episodes to air next spring.

Building on that momentum, two new series debut this weekend (see reviews in Sunday's On the Arts section). The better of the two, "Side Order of Life" (8 p.m. Sunday), follows a woman, Jenny (Marisa Coughlin), who has an Ally McBeal-esque imagination after her best friend's cancer returns. She postpones her wedding to her fiance (Jason Priestley) and re-energizes her photography career.

Series creator Margaret Nagle said the imaginary moments -- Jenny sees everyone wearing her bridesmaid dress, even guys -- were inspired by the musical "Wicked" and the surreal nature of living in Los Angeles, where the show is set.

"In moments of crisis and indecision, this power [to see things that aren't there] comes to her," Nagle said. "It's just there at certain moments when it can elucidate characters and story."

"State of Mind" (9 p.m. Sunday), an overpopulated show with underdeveloped characters, stars Lili Taylor as a psychotherapist, just one of many debuting on TV in the coming months.

"I think it says people like to watch an ongoing process," said series creator Amy Bloom of the trend. "People get tired of other ongoing franchises, and people are more used to talking about their feelings now than they used to be."

This fall, the second season of Lifetime's popular clairvoyant show "Lisa Williams: Life Among the Dead" premieres Oct. 12, followed by a new reality show, "America's Psychic Challenge," which features amateur psychics competing to see who has the strongest abilities (not sure how they'll judge that one).

In January, Lifetime will premiere "How to Look Good Naked," a makeover show hosted by Carson Kressley that "teaches women of all shapes and sizes how to go from self-loathing to self-loving."

Channel surfing

Ken Burns' new PBS series "The War" premieres Sept. 23 on WQED and will air in multiple formats, including four nights its premiere week and three nights the following week. After that initial run, the more than 14-hour World War II documentary will air again in weekly installments for seven weeks. ... The long-rumored Fox Business Network is finally official, with plans to launch Oct. 15. ... Laura Vandervoort (The N's "Instant Star") will join The CW's "Smallville" as Supergirl. ... FX's "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" will have its season premiere Sept. 13. ... The final, unaired episodes of Fox's "Drive" will be available online next week at MySpace.com/Fox.

TV Q&A

This week's TV Q&A responds to questions about the Emmys, a reporter's name change and Comcast, Comcast, Comcast. Read it online at post-gazette.com/tv.