TV tonight: "The Middleman," "Weeds" and "Secret Diary of a Call Girl"

Those kooks at LA.com have once again neglected to post today's reviews. (However, if you do visit LA.com's TV page, you can find nice stories about Bastille Day, the 2007 Lotus Festival, local casinos and a stripper, so go figure.) So here they are:

*

If at first you don't succeed, write a comic book. Javier Grillo-Marxuach, who has written for shows like "Lost," "Medium" and "Charmed," initially wrote "The Middleman" as a TV pilot; when it was rejected, he turned around and turned it into a comic-book series, which somehow found its way back to TV.

For which we should be grateful. "The Middleman" is a fun little romp of a show, a superhero action-comedy that's deadpan one moment and over-the-top silly the next. And stars Matt Keeslar and Natalie Morales provide the perfect wit and panache to possibly make this a surprise sleeper hit this summer.

Much of the story and dialogue in tonight's episode come airlifted intact from Grillo-Marxuach's comic book. We meet Wendy (Morales), an aspiring artist consigned to menial temp jobs, working for a DNA lab when she's attacked by a very cheesy-looking monster, the result of an experiment gone horribly awry. She's rescued by The Middleman (Keeslar), a superhero so staid he makes the Silver-Age Superman look like "Iron Man's" party-hearty alter-ego Tony Stark, who's impressed at how she responded to the peril with a cool, almost blasé, temperament ("Whatever, I'm a temp," she replies) and offers her a job as his assistant.

Together, they battle the sort of menaces that you might see in a Mad Magazine parody of "The X-Files." Tonight, they investigate an ape who's murdering mobsters. Confronting the evil genius behind the scheme, The Middleman declares, "If there's one thing I hate more than scientists trying to take over the world, it's scientists who twist innocent primates with computer-enhanced mind-control to live out their sick and perverted fantasies of criminal power."

"That's a very specific thing to hate," Wendy replies.

"The Middleman" is cheeky in almost every detail, down to the title cards that give out too much information, information often repeated in silly, expository dialogue. At times, the show goes almost giddy with its foolishness, such as a brief parody of the stylish '60s spy show "The Avengers."

But Keeslar and Morales make for a great team. Keeslar rattles off seemingly endless lines of technobabble with aplomb, and Morales is a terrific foil, responding to the lunacy surrounding her with dry whimsy - she (ital) refuses (end ital) to be nonplused.

Wendy may be incapable of being surprised, but viewers may be happily surprised at how charmingly goofy they find "The Middleman."

*

Thanks to "Secret Diary of a Call Girl," a British import debuting tonight on Showtime, I now know many tricks of the prostitution racket, tricks I of course will never be able to implement. Such as: Wear men's deodorant and never perfume, so that the client doesn't go home smelling of a woman.

So you could justify watching "Secret Diary of a Call Girl" by arguing that it's educational, and the lasciviousness is just a bonus you're going to have to live with.

Oddly, however, the show isn't quite as sexy or saucy as one would imagine. Certainly, it's playful - Billie Piper, who stars as Belle (her professional name)/Hannah (her name outside her bed), directly addresses the camera as she glibly yet frankly explicates her life, her job and her sexuality - but there's also a melancholia surrounding the proceedings, as well, as the show just hints that her life isn't as fulfilling as she might suggest.

Episodes don't feel fully formed, probably because they don't adhere to the three-act formula. Each essentially follows Belle/Hannah as she prepares and services her john-of-the-week - an S&M client, a threesome, a foursome, a creep, a sleepover, etc. (In the first half of the eight-episode season, Belle commits a few professional breaches; in the second half, she receives comeuppance for other, unrelated reasons.)

A little of her personal life is sprinkled in. Her friend/former lover Ben (Iddo Goldberg) is engaged, but given that all we see of his fiancée is her torso as she paces before him while he's on the phone with Hannah, the writing's on the wall as far as that relationship goes.

Piper's performance is winningly pert, but outside of a couple of episodes, the sex is more inert than erotic. "Secret Diary of a Call Girl" is a tease that somehow never manages to follow through, either on its promise or simply with fully satisfying narratives.

Meanwhile, Showtime's pot dramedy "Weeds" returns for its fourth season with Nancy (Mary-Louise Parker), the show's lovable suburban pot dealer, in more dire straits than ever: At the end of last season, she torched her home in the middle of a California wildfire, and so now she and her sons and brother-in-law (Justin Kirk) are on the lam.

They land in a small town on the Mexico border, where she holes up with her disapproving former father-in-law (Albert Brooks), who's caring for his moribund mother when he's not at the racetrack. Nancy needs some cash quick, so she hooks up with the local bad element, while back in Majestic, Celia (Elizabeth Perkins) is arrested for Nancy's pot business. (The biggest laugh through the first three episodes is the prison makeover Celia receives at the hands of some Latina inmates.)

In the first three episodes of the season, not much happens except for a lot of narrative wheel-spinning, as if, having blown up the show's premise at the end of last season, the show's writers aren't sure where to go this year.

More worrisome is the fact that Parker, whose work has been so winning despite reported clashes with the show's producers, seems to be above it all now. Her attitude apparently mirrors Nancy's: Keep smiling, and this, too, shall pass, whatever the indignity may be (at one point, she's relegated to urinating in a plastic cup in her car during a traffic jam).

With luck, "Weeds" should eventually find its bearings as the season progresses. But at this point, you probably don't want whatever it is its writers are smoking.

- "The Middleman:" 8 tonight, ABC Family.
- "Weeds:" 10 tonight, Showtime.
- "The Secret Diary of a Call Girl:" 10:30 tonight, Showtime.