MOM BRAKES FOR DRUG DEALS

It's the boring people who lead the most interesting lives.

Scott Peterson was a fertilizer salesman from Modesto, Calif. The madam
arrested in June on charges of running a Lindenwold, N.J., escort service
called August Playmates turned out to be an 80-year-old grandmother with a
walker and an oxygen mask. Lorena Bobbitt was a 24-year-old manicurist in
Manassas, Va., when she sliced off her husband's penis while he was sleeping.

So the premise of Showtime's "Weeds," a satiric look at suburban vice, is
not so far-fetched: Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker), a suddenly widowed
soccer mom, sells marijuana in her affluent Southern California community
to make ends meet, or as she plaintively puts it to her accountant and
valued pot customer, Doug (Kevin Nealon), "I'm dealing to maintain my
lifestyle."

Even on premium cable, setting up a privileged dope-dealing suburban matron
as a sympathetic heroine is tricky. "Weeds" is not a genre or period series
like HBO's "Sopranos" or "Deadwood." It is a darkly comic drama loosely
wrapped in playful satire, a little bit like "American Beauty" and a little
bit like "Desperate Housewives." (The theme song, played over the opening
credits, is the anticonformist "Little Boxes," by the 60's
singer-songwriter Malvina Reynolds.)

Suburban ennui has been a favorite American theme for half a century now,
and words like Cheeveresque and Updikean are enshrined in the popular
culture lexicon along with the 50's sitcom equivalent, Beaveresque. The
preoccupation seems particularly acute now as the last of the baby boomers
move to cul de sacs and country clubs. But nowadays the suburbs are
demonized on television as simmering cesspools of adultery and greed both
for entertainment and as a pick-me-up for the writers and producers who
live there and refuse to view themselves as boringly bourgeois.

The plot of "Weeds," however, is indebted to "Saving Grace," a British film
from 2000 that starred Brenda Blethyn as a widow who turns to a different
kind of weed to get by, and the comedian Craig Ferguson as her gardener and
co-conspirator.

The American version is less cute. Nancy, a sad-eyed housewife with a
sardonic sense of humor, is adrift in the cookie-cutter suburb called
Agrestic, surrounded by callous friends and catty neighbors. At a P.T.A.
meeting shortly after Nancy's husband drops dead of a heart attack while
jogging, the mothers lock their faces into mournful expressions and
speculate whether Nancy has had cosmetic procedures since the funeral. "I
think she got a little Botie between the eyes," one whispers knowingly.

Nancy, trying to raise two sons, turns to her suppliers - a sharp-tongued,
scolding matriarch, Heylia (Tonye Patano), and her extended family - for
cannabis and moral support. At first, the portrait of Heylia and her sons
and daughters is a discomfiting caricature. When Nancy asks if the ounce
she is buying is not a little small, Heylia turns ghetto indignant. "Bitch,
I can eyeball an ounce from outer space with my glasses cracked," she says,
as her family members chortle at Nancy's misstep. By the second episode,
their characters have filled out, and the stereotypes soften.

And the same is true of all the series' amoral underpinnings. The premiere
is a bit stiff, but the episodes improve over time, mostly thanks to two
mesmerizing actresses in the lead roles: Elizabeth Perkins plays Celia,
Nancy's frenemy, her worst best friend, a brittle, snobbish socialite with
a chilly wit and simmering rage.

When she confronts her husband's mistress, the tennis club pro, over drinks
in the bar, the mistress asks Celia if she intends to file for divorce. "I
can't support two households," Celia snaps. "And I am not living in a
townhouse again."

On "Weeds," Ms. Perkins's hair is dyed blond and she wears low-cut dresses,
but she and Ms. Parker still look very much alike and have a similar cool,
brainy presence on screen. They look like a middle-aged version of
Catherine Deneuve and her sister, Francoise Dorleac, in "Les Demoiselles de
Rochefort."

The two women mistrust each other, but there is also grudging respect and
even a bond between them. And Celia, law-abiding but cruel and shallow (she
torments her chubby younger daughter about her weight), serves as a foil
for Nancy, who deals pot at school soccer matches but is still a loving,
supportive mother to her two boys.

Doug, the pothead accountant, introduces Nancy to the world of legal
medical marijuana stores, which he describes as "like Amsterdam, only you
don't have to visit Anne Frank's house and pretend to be all sad and
everything." But she is not helped by her dead husband's brother Andy
(Justin Kirk), a charming ne'er-do-well who shows up to sponge off his
sister-in-law and cause trouble. He gets off to a good start by having
cybersex with his 15-year-old nephew's girlfriend.

"Weeds" is well written and engrossing, and has a slick balance of satire
and soap opera - "The O.C." for viewers who don't want to see pretty, happy
people on television.

Weeds

Showtime, Sunday night at 11, Eastern and Pacific times; 10, Central time.

Jenji Kohan, creator and executive producer; Roberto Benabib, co-executive
producer; Brian Dannelly, director and consulting producer; Devon K.
Shepard and Mark A. Burley supervising producers; Shawn Schepps and Mr.
Dannelly, consulting producers; Danielle Weinstock and Matthew Salsberg,
co-producers.

WITH: Mary-Louise Parker (Nancy Botwin), Elizabeth Perkins (Celia Hodes),
Kevin Nealon (Doug Wilson), Justin Kirk (Andy Botwin), Tonye Patano (Heylia
James), Romany Malco (Conrad Shepard), Hunter Parrish (Silas Botwin),
Alexander Gould (Shane Botwin), Andy Milder (Dean Hodes), Renee Victor
(Lupita), Allie Grant (Isabelle Hodes), Tyrone Mitchell (Keeyon) and Indigo
(Vaneeta).