The Big C

Linney, a terrific actress, anchors this cast nicely. We like them all, which is critical and helps us past the fact that Linney's wild-child moments break little new ground. Neither does the message The Big C ultimately delivers, which doesn't mean it's a bad one.

In general, there's a pat, familiar quirkiness to The Big C that keeps you at a remove from it, and too many easy appeals to your emotions.... Still, with Linney at the heart of The Big C, there's reason to think that the series will improve.

It's possible The Big C will get better, even if (maybe especially if) Cathy never does. And if it takes two seasons to become a great sitcom about dying? That might be worth the wait.

Linney, who also serves as executive producer, is luminous as always. But the first three episodes fall into a predictable pattern of Cathy confronting someone and dropping cryptic comments about her diagnosis.

It tries very hard not to take the expected path. Too hard, unfortunately. So determined are Hunt, executive producer/showrunner Jenny Bicks and Linney that The Big C be unsentimental that they jam early episodes with so many over-blown characters and wacky antics that it's impossible to attach meaning to any of them.

More often, the show is a show: the camera cranes out to show Cathy's loneliness, the half-hour closes with a bittersweet pop song or the point is made too obviously ("Cancer's not a passport to a better life, cancer's the reason I'm not gonna have a life"). Still, the show does illustrate a useful idea, that what you think is "normal" is only that, what you think.

I really want to love Linney in this role, because she's a great actress and she does pull off about half of her scenes in The Big C. But there's just something leaden and unnatural about the way her role is written and performed, as if someone is standing on the sidelines yelling "Smiles, everyone! Smiles!" the whole time.

Underneath all the excess and that premium-cable drive to be more-clever-and-shocking-than-thou, there is a core of truth in the story of a mother desperate to reconnect with--and actually raise--her son before she dies. Give us that show, and we might be willing to accept the wacky-but-wise neighbor and the tough fat girl with the soft heart. You brought a great actor to TV, Big C. Use her or lose her.