'KINGPIN' A SOLID CRIME-FAMILY DRAMA

But Characters Arouse Less Sympathy Than Those On 'Sopranos'

HOLLYWOOD - Fairly or unfairly, NBC's new "Kingpin" makes its debut tonight
with great expectations -- and a whole lot of baggage.

Within the television world, the six-episode series is widely viewed as
NBC's answer to HBO's "The Sopranos": a violent saga of an emotionally
conflicted crime family that at least nudges the edge of the envelope in
terms of what's permissible on network TV. It is the first drama on a
commercial network to feature a largely Latino cast, a milestone even if
the cast mostly plays drug dealers or thugs. It assumes, to a greater
extent than any show before it, that viewers understand rudimentary Spanish
or at least Spanglish, the border-state mix of English and Spanish.

NBC is spending millions on promoting "Kingpin" as its big event for
February sweeps, calling it "a breakthrough" in TV drama and "something
you've never seen before" on network television. The network thinks enough
of the show's appeal that it will also air a Spanish-language version of
the series on Telemundo and a R-rated version on Bravo, the network's newly
acquired cable channel.

That's a lot to lay on a series before it airs its first minute of footage.

But, says Jeff Zucker, the president of NBC Entertainment, the network
"knew the show would be risky and different and potentially controversial.
All those things appealed to us."

Yet, at the same time, NBC executives and the show's creators are trying to
put some distance between "Kingpin" and comparisons to "The Sopranos" and
other similar fare such as the Oscar-nominated film "Traffic," which also
dealt with the drug trade.

"People can say whatever they want to now," says "Kingpin" creator David
Mills. "They can say we ripped off 'Traffic,' they can say we ripped off
'The Sopranos.' Four weeks from now, they're going to be talking about what
'Kingpin' is, not what it's similar to."

What "Kingpin" does come across as is a sometimes spicy but often
uninvolving stew that mixes elements of "Traffic" and "The Godfather" with
the attitude of cable shows such as "The Shield," the visual style of
"Miami Vice" and more than a touch of the telenovelas that are staples of
Spanish-language TV.

At the core of the drama is the Cadena family, headed by Stanford-educated
Miguel Cadena (Yancey Arias) who is trying to take over the family's
drug-trafficking operation and turn it into something of a legitimate
business. "We're not murderers," insists Cadena early in tonight's opening
episode. "We're businessmen."

The power behind the throne is his coke-snorting, scheming wife, Marlene,
who -- as played with great gusto by Sheryl Lee ("Twin Peaks") -- makes
Lady Macbeth look positively benevolent. Swirling around the couple is a
host of relatives, drug dealers, U.S. drug agents and some truly
over-the-top villains such as El Huevudo (Jacob Vargas) who brandishes a
whip and feeds the body of a slain DEA agent to his pet tiger.

Mills, who has done such noteworthy television as "The Corner" for HBO and
"Homicide" for NBC, says he is confident that the network TV audience is
now willing to accept a complex but ultimately amoral man as the central
character in a series.

"I wanted to tell a tragedy," says Mills who said he revisited "Macbeth"
before starting work on the show. "I wanted to tell the story of a man and
the condition of his soul, who has two sides. No one is strictly evil. If
Miguel was just evil, he would not be interesting."

But, Mills admits, the show "is challenging in that you're not tuning in to
see a cop lock up a criminal. You're tuning in to measure the condition of
this man's soul."

One thing that may also be challenging to viewers is that -- on what is the
first network drama with a largely Latino cast -- the main characters are
hardly role models. There has already been some criticism of the show with
television writer Magaly Morales of the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
suggesting that "when U.S. Latinos asked for more representation on
mainstream television, I'm not sure 'Kingpin' was what they really had in
mind."

But Mills insists that "the Latino audience will embrace this show more
than anybody else and love it."

"Why? Not just because they're seeing some great Latino actors that they're
not going to see elsewhere on broadcast TV, but in every episode, there's
at least one song in Spanish. There's a lot of dialogue spoken in Spanish
- -- some subtitled, some not. I want the Latino audience to feel not that
this is a show about Mexicans but that this is a show for us as the Latino
audience."

Mills notes that some critics expected blacks to take issue with "The
Corner" and its depiction of African-American life in Baltimore.

But "black people loved it," he says. "Why? Because it wasn't a show about
black people; it was a show about human weakness. The same thing applies here."

Bobby Cannavale -- a veteran TV actor who plays Chato Cadena, Miguel's
brother -- not only strongly backs Mills but insists that the show is a
breakthrough for Latino actors and writers.

"This show is unlike any other show on network television and it's
employing 20 to 30 Latino actors every week," says Cannavale. "I've never
been on a show like that."

Adds Arias: "The fact that we can make any kind of impact on anyone is a
wonderful thing. If anyone is so driven to say, 'They can't represent
Latinos that way,' I implore those same people to write wonderful, deep,
intense characters as doctors and lawyers so more actors of Latin heritage
can play these roles."

What is even less likely to set off any furor is the content of the show.

The NBC promotion machine may gleefully suggest that "Kingpin" has
language, sex and violence never before seen on a network. But the fact of
the matter is there is nothing in "Kingpin" that hasn't been seen before.

The language is no rougher than that on "NYPD Blue." The gore quotient is
no higher than a typical episode of "CSI." The sexual content is tame
compared with "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" or the remake of
"Dragnet" that makes its debut opposite "Kingpin" tonight.

And that's fine with Mills who has written for cable and network TV.

"Look, I come from journalism, and it's the same difference as writing for
the Washington Post and writing for Rolling Stone," he says. "There are
words that belong in Rolling Stone that don't belong in the Washington
Post. There are words that belong on HBO that don't belong on NBC.

"But beyond that, it's all about a good story."

Which is what may be what keeps "Kingpin" from being the kind of breakout
hit NBC is hoping for.

The series looks great, particularly tonight's opener directed by Allen
Coulter of "The Sopranos." The attention to detail, from the music to the
accents to inner workings of a drug lab, is impressive. The acting --
particularly by Lee, Cannavale, Vargas and Angela Alvarado Rosa as a DEA
agent -- is splendid. Individual sequences are positively chilling.

But in at least the first two episodes, there's no real connection between
the main characters and the viewer. It's not a matter that these are bad
guys. It's that you don't care about them as you do the Soprano family, no
matter how awful their crimes. And "Kingpin" is totally lacking in the kind
of nuance and sense of culture that makes "The Sopranos" work so beautifully.

There are things to admire about "Kingpin" -- just not enough of them to
make this adventuresome series anything more than just a good TV crime drama.

Kingpin

1/2

Airing: 10 p.m. Sundays and Tuesdays for three weeks starting tonight.

Creator: David Mills

Cast: Yancey Arias, Sheryl Lee, Bobby Cannavale, Angela Alvarado Rosa,
Brian Benben, Shay Roundtree, Jacob Vargas

Notes: "Kingpin" will air on NBC with a Spanish translation on SAP. In
addition, a Spanish-language version will air on Telemundo and a more
graphic version with deleted scenes on Bravo. Both will air in March.