Ellen Gray | TV brings us Philly, both dark and light

HACK. 9 p.m. tomorrow, Channel 3.

AMERICAN DREAMS. 8 p.m. Sunday, Channel 10.

ONE OF THE nicest things that can be said about Mike Olshansky, the title character in CBS' Hack, is that he's not always a very nice guy.

Fired from the Philadelphia Police Department and under felony indictment in connection with the disappearance of some cash, Olshansky (David Morse) has alienated both his wife (Donna Murphy) and his young son (Matthew Borish), and neither his former partner, Marcellus Washington (Andre Braugher), nor his drinking buddy, Father Tom "Grizz" Grzelak (George Dzundza), seems too happy with him, either.

Whatever he feels about the end of his career as a cop, it's not remorse.

Now driving a cab, he's a hulking 6 feet 4 inches of bitterness, a man who misses his old life in ways that are hinted at even more in Morse's face than in the occasionally over-the-top pilot script by creator David Koepp ("Spider-Man"), which sets Olshansky up for a life of crime-fighting as a vigilante cabbie.

Koepp's vision of Olshansky as "a superhero without superpowers" has prompted comparisons to CBS' '80s drama The Equalizer, but Morse, a gifted character actor with a dry wit, seems to be working toward something a little deeper. Not to mention darker.

It's not a bad time to be dark on CBS, which last season scored unexpectedly with The Guardian, a show whose lead character, a lawyer with a drug conviction, still gives some people the creeps. Hack will be followed on Friday nights by Robbery Homicide Investigation, a Michael Mann-produced cop show that makes CBS's CSI: Crime Scene Investigation look downright cheery.

Flawed heroes, a la NYPD Blue's Andy Sipowicz, might be old hat on some other networks, but their appearance on CBS is a sign that the network's moving, creatively, beyond its Touched by an Angel core audience, something that might not have been possible before Survivor brought in viewers willing to spend an hour a week with the likes of Richard Hatch and Jerri Manthey.

Olshansky could be a lot more interesting than those so-called "real" people, as long as his redemption doesn't come too quickly.

What's not clear yet is how much his weekly head-busting is going to dominate Hack. The first drama series to be shot entirely in Philadelphia, it's encountered production challenges and recently changed show-runners, and a second episode, still being tweaked, wasn't available for screening.

For the moment, though, I'm willing to trust Mike Olshansky in the driver's seat.

It's a long way from Hack to NBC's American Dreams, the season's other set-in-Philadelphia series - about 2,700 miles and nearly four decades.

But while the Hollywood-filmed Dreams is easily dismissed as a lighter-than-air look at life in the good old days, this family drama, too, seems to be striving for something a little deeper.

It's probably just as well that creator Jonathan Prince had thought of doing a show about a Philadelphia family coping with the changes wrought by the 1960s before his old boss, Dick Clark, came along and offered him the archives of American Bandstand to draw from.

Because while the black-and-white Bandstand footage, cleverly spliced with new film, provides a lively background for the coming-of-age story that focuses on the Pryor family's 15-year-old daughter, Meg (Brittany Snow), the real action on "American Dreams" takes place around the Pryors' dinner table, where her parents, Jack (Tom Verica) and Helen (Gail O'Grady), are experiencing culture shock on a nightly basis as they bring up four children.

The year being 1963, one shock is all too predictable - and the treatment of it a little forced - but in many of its smaller moments, "American Dreams" manages to tug at our emotions rather than merely manipulate them.

You can reach Ellen Gray by e-mail at elgray@phillynews.com, by fax at 215-854-5852 or by mail at the Philadelphia Daily News, Box 7788, Philadelphia, PA 19101.