Nine lives

Crime drama should be in theaters | Mary Hopkins

The Nine (Wednesdays, ABC 10:00 ET) works well on every level except perhaps the most crucial one for a show that aired in the fall after Lost. At first it doesn't flesh out the characters adequately, and the scripts are so tightly written that missing even a few minutes makes it hard to understand the action.

The show's plot focuses on the lives of nine characters held hostage in a bank for more than two days. In retrospect it fleshes out what happened during the 52-hour crisis and how that event transformed the characters' lives.

A nebbishy insurance company drone (John Billingsley), about to commit suicide in the men's room at the bank, becomes a hero during the hostage crisis—but finds afterwards that he can no longer tolerate certain people in his former life. A cop (Timothy Daly) with a gambling problem, also a hero in the bank, nearly loses his job when he protests the way his department handled the crisis. An assistant district attorney (Kim Raver), also a hostage, must weigh how much backing up the cop will cost her.