Killer Women

As the title declares with pride, the show has a lot in common with old-style drive-in second features at drive-ins.

The show's action-packed and wildly improbable, but Helfer looks as if she might be having fun, and if you don't think too hard (and wouldn't rather be watching the gunplay in "Justified"), you might, too.

Like all shows set in Texas, Killer Women is cooked through with too much yee-haw sauce and a whole lot of urban-cowgirl chic, but Helfer ably carries off the assignment and keeps the momentum going.

It breaks absolutely no new ground, but it's lively, fast-paced and enjoyable enough, if you like this sort of thing.

If you can overlook [that most of it was filmed in New Mexico]--not to mention all the Texas stereotypes--the new hour from executive producer Sofia Vergara of “Modern Family” fame is a fairly amusing cops-and-killers romp featuring lots of easy-on-the-eyes actresses and references to San Antonio, Alamo Heights, Bexar County and the Hill Country.

A by-the-book series that is way less fun than something executive-produced by Sofia Vergara has any right to be. [17 Jan 2014, p.62]

This is Texas, y'all. And you may very well feel like you've been to this rodeo before.

Executive producer Sofia Vergara, better known as Gloria on ABC’s “Modern Family,” and series creator Hannah Shakespeare (“The Raven”) have a lot of ideas, but there isn’t a single surprise in the batch.

There is some archness in Killer Women--the opening scene looks like a Robert Palmer music video from the 1980s--but no real humor and still less suspense.

Killer Women is Cagney & Lacey without Lacey and with an all-female criminal cast--along with a higher proportion of saps than the ads would have you believe.

At heart, Killer Women is a procedural drama with a surface-strong female protagonist; scratch the surface and it's the same easy, familiar programming.

While the premise might appear to be plumbing some of the same culture-clash depths as FX’s “The Bridge,” in other words, it mostly settles for being an old-fashioned procedural.

Both [Killer Women on ABC, "Intelligence" on CBS] feel like paint-by-numbers hours, unsatisfying offerings that are difficult to recall an hour after you've watched them.

It's all pretty retro and forgettable.

Expect nothing new under the sun from a drama set in San Antonio, filmed in New Mexico and falling flat wherever the cameras might roll.

A clunky, clichéd Texas-based crime drama that has the added bonus of being unforgivably sexist, never mind that it was created and produced by women.

Neither pilot [Intelligence or Killer Women] left me with a desire for more.

It's more video game, than TV drama.

The performances are OK, and it would be nice to see Helfer in better material, but the scripts are not just cliche-ridden--they're moth-eaten.

The worst new show of 2014 can take solace that there are still 358 days left for another one to exceed it.