'Monday Mornings' review: New David E. Kelley series is smart

The doctors include compassionate-but-full-of-himself Tyler Wilson (Jamie Bamber); tough guy chief of surgery Jorge Villanueva (Ving Rhames); neurosurgeon Tina Ridgeway (Jennifer Finnigan); Dr. John Lieberman (Jonathan Silverman, Finnigan's real-life husband); Buck Tierney (Bill Irwin), Sydney Napur (Sarayu Rao), and bedside-manner-challenged Sung Park (Keong Sim). This is David E. Kelley's ("Ally McBeal," "The Practice") first series for cable; based on the novel of the same name by CNN's Sanjay Gupta.

With "Monday Mornings," the best easily outweighs the worst, and (just like that) TNT suddenly has a compelling new series. Kelley seems to be on comfortable terrain here, reunited with his supremely capable wingman, Bill D'Elia -- these two go all the way back to "Chicago Hope" -- and working a subject matter that suits his intellect and dramatic instincts.

There aren't a lot of laughs here, which is surprising because Kelley can be one of television's most wickedly funny writers. But the excellent actors easily pick up that slack, especially Sim as the brusque, clipped no-nonsense surgeon who uses English much as a chef uses a mallet to tenderize meat. Bamber (Lee Adama from "Battlestar Galactica") is excellent here, too (and whose bright idea was it to cast "Sesame Street's" Irwin, who can apparently do just about anything?).

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