Devilishly clever 'Reaper' better than remade'Bionic Woman'

God is in the details, and a new TV series about none other than Satan himself gets those details right, while another about what man hath wrought finds itself struggling with knotty issues.

The first series is "Reaper," and in the humble opinion of Your Friendly Neighborhood TV Critic it is the best new show of the fall when it debuts at 8 p.m. today on WGN Channel 9, courtesy of the CW network. The premise sounds gimmicky. A guy finds out on his 21st birthday that his parents have sold his soul to the devil. The devil doesn't take possession; he simply assigns the guy the job of being a ghoulish bounty hunter, rounding up escapees from hell. Week in, week out, he goes about this task.

Yet that skeletal description doesn't give a proper idea of the grace notes "Reaper" hits with its wicked sense of humor. Bret Harrison, who played the manic straight man in Fox's promising, but ill-used comedy "The Loop," is Sam, our slacker hero, but Ray Wise, who played the "wow Bob wow"-possessed killer in "Twin Peaks," steals the show as Satan. He first assigns Sam the task of capturing a demon arsonist who's hiding out on Earth in the guise of a firefighter.

"Can't you just taste the irony?" he says with a wry smile that never cracks.

As the devil's proxy, Sam gets some nifty new powers, as well as a device each week designed to aid in the capture of the lost soul.

"This will help," Satan tells Sam tonight. "A vessel, hand-crafted in the bowels of perdition by the iniquitous and the vile." When Sam looks stunned, Satan adds, "Oh, I forgot, you got 600 on your SATs, didn't you."

As great as Wise is in a role that seems even more realized than John Milton's Satan in "Paradise Lost," Tyler Labine is almost as good as Sam's burnout buddy, "Sock" Wysocki. When he first hears Sam's story, he responds, "You lucky (dog). … Nothing cool ever happens to me."

Where there are dweebs like these, there must be a hottie, but Missy Peregrym likewise brings an unexpected quality to the part. She's supportive, demure and slyly sexy. Nothing in "Reaper" is quite as obvious as it seems; it's all enhanced with lovely little details, most of which add to the humor.

Even the parents have a legitimate explanation for how they got their son into this mess, and Satan utters the most calming line in the pilot.

"I've seen how this all ends," he says. "Don't worry. God wins." And then he smiles a smile that would grant grace to an ogre.

Almost nobody smiles in "Bionic Woman," NBC's biggest buzz show of the fall, which debuts at 8 p.m. Wednesday on WMAQ Channel 5. Michelle Ryan stars in the title role as Jaime Sommers, who is pregnant by her studly scientist boyfriend and agreeing to marry him when a truck T-bones their car at an intersection. Chris Bowers as the boyfriend, Dr. Will Anthros, just happens to be working on a government project developing high-tech prosthetic devices for human transplants. He goes ahead and does what he does.

"I couldn't bear to lose you," he explains to her later, but Jaime is a little more conflicted about it all.

"What have you done to me?" she shouts.

She's put back together, better than before, as they used to say on the original '70s series and in its inspiration, "The Six Million Dollar Man," but there are a couple of new wrinkles.

First, it's a government military project, and Miguel Ferrer turns up as Jonas, who's running it and expects a little payback for what they've invested in Jaime -- whether she volunteered for it or not.

Yet that's nothing compared with the other complication. It turns out that a more accurate title would be "Bionic Women," as Jaime is actually version 2.0, and Katee Sackhoff, who played the butt-kicking Starbuck in "Battlestar Galactica," pops up as Sarah Corvus, Bionic Woman 1.0, or rather 1.7.2 at this point, as she keeps upgrading herself.

"I'm cutting away all the parts of me that are weak," she says.

That brings us to the biggest issue where "Bionic Woman" is concerned. The show wants to adopt a distinctly post-feminist posture, yet what do the writers do but immediately set these women against one another? That ain't sisterhood.

"Bionic Woman" is undeniably cool, but I get the impression that creator David Eick (likewise of "Battlestar Galactica") hasn't yet sorted out all the details. Like "Heroes" and "Lost" before it, the show is content to create buzz and let the meaning come later. So it could soon become as aggravating as it is exhilarating. We'll just have to see how it plays out.

Meanwhile, Jimmy Smits returns to series TV as the head of a Cuban-American clan in "Cane," debuting at 9 p.m. today on CBS' WBBM Channel 2. The cast is terrific, including Hector Elizondo and Rita Moreno, and it's well-thought-out, involving the shift of the family business from sugar cane to rum. Although it aspires to "The Sopranos"-style drama, it's still a broadcast series, and on CBS yet, and as much as the so-called Tiffany Network would like to get more daring it just can't bring itself to fully commit to the cutting edge. "Cane" is good, but it seems tame next to the cable series that thrilled viewers this summer, such as "Mad Men" and "Saving Grace." Still, it's a solid new addition to the prime-time schedule. Smits fans won't be disappointed.