When the “Shark” bites

It can be entertaining to watch an actor enjoy preening (it can also be excruciating), and James Woods struts like no other. “Shark” is a pretty foursquare legal drama, elevated by Woods’ charismatic self-regard.

Season two commences Sunday, and they get their splashy special effect out of the way pretty quickly – a bus blows up outside Parker Center downtown, containing a witness who weaseled out on a murder case Stark (Woods) was working.

A few scenes of requisite exposition later, and we have a sinister new supervillain, a Russian mob boss who kills indiscriminantly but not so indiscriminantly that the police can seem to do anything about it. (Lotsa plot holes in this one, most involving glossed-over dereliction of duty on behalf of the cops and one involving misplaced drama over witness protection when one aspect of the crime would seem to invite the Feds to get involved and be able to offer it.)

And we have a new member of Stark’s team – Danny Reyes (Kevin Alejandro), who's hellbent on nailing aforementioned mob boss, whose drive rivals Stark’s and who has some secrets in his past that will no doubt dribble out over the course of the season.

Season two seems to want to take some of the burden of the show off Woods’ shoulders, for which he is no doubt grateful, and give Jeri Ryan more to do, for which she is no doubt grateful: Her character, Jessica Devlin, lost the D.A.’s election (to a wormy guy played by Kevin Pollak), so she joins Stark’s team.

Here’s hoping they wrap up the Russian mob boss thing pretty quickly: He’s one of those smoothly unflappable guys who tips his espresso cup to Stark because he knows he’s such an evil genius who’ll never get caught and his banter is of that sort of oh-so-civilized manufactured pomposity that really wears on my nerves.

- “Shark:” 10 p.m. Sunday, CBS Channel 2.