ATV character truly modeled after Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state, could be fascinating. We’d get a female lead with a spikey edge, a fierce intelligence, a complex personal history, a persistent sense of ambition, and an “evolving” approach to style. Her husband would be a supporting character, a flawed, unpredictable charmer with great appetites who still likes a bit of attention. She would definitely be the most faceted character on the show, though, her inscrutability making her all the more watchable and compelling.
This series-TV Hillary would be a complex cable heroine with blurry motivations, not quite Glenn Close’s ruthless lawyer Patty Hewes from “Damages,” but someone in that dynamic warts-and-all vein. She would not be a boring saint in a suit, which is what CBS’s new drama “Madam Secretary” delivers.
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Tea Leoni’s Secretary of State Elizabeth McCord is unwaveringly likable, except when she’s standing against the tide of political inhumanity, in which cases she is more than just likable; she’s honorable and heroic. Probably all you need to know about her interminable goodness is that her nemesis, the president’s chief of staff, is played by TV’s post-millennial Snidely Whiplash, actor Zeljko Ivanek. Based on the first episode of “Madam Secretary,” Sunday night at 8:30, Elizabeth is as unrealistically smart and decent as President Bartlet from “The West Wing,” except that, alas, her lines were not written by Aaron Sorkin. “Madam Secretary” writer Barbara Hall, of “Joan of Arcadia” and “Homeland,” is no slouch, but her dialogue isn’t nearly as brainy and self-conscious and messily brilliant.
So for those accusing CBS and Hall of using “Madam Secretary” to promote a Hillary presidency, think again. Yes, Elizabeth is a blond, female secretary of state, but there’s not much commonality between her and Hillary beyond hair color and job description. Really, I can’t imagine many people actually seeing Elizabeth as any kind of Hillary, romanticized in order to seduce voters or otherwise reshaped for some campaign agenda. Maybe when Hillary was in her 20s, she exuded some of Elizabeth’s unadulterated idealism. Maybe.
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When we first meet Elizabeth, she is an earthy horse lover who cleans the barn, a passionate university professor, a devoted mother to her two kids, and a romantic wife (to Tim Daly’s Henry), and she has absolutely no interest in politics. She takes the job only out of a moral obligation to serve her country, after the suspicious death of the secretary of state and a plea from the president and her former CIA boss, played by Keith Carradine. Why does the president want her so badly? “You don’t just think outside the box,” he tells her in a bite born to be in a commercial. “You don’t know there is a box.”
Because she’s not a career politician, the perfect Elizabeth is a lot less interesting than the political beasts who rule “Scandal” and “House of Cards.” And because she’s not a career politician, her mastery of the system is entirely unbelievable — just watch her work her way around every obstacle in her way in the premiere with just a bit of spunk, like a grown-up Nancy Drew. Leoni is an appealing actress, but still there’s something monochromatic about her delivery. She has Elizabeth using the same understated and heavily toned voice with her office staff that she does with her kids, including the precociously cynical young Josh (Evan Roe), who believes in government conspiracies and would probably make a more believable public official than his mom.
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Like the much more tightly written “The Good Wife,” which CBS is pairing it with, “Madam Secretary” toggles between stories of the week and ongoing plotlines. The first case of the week involves two young American men who are being held in Syria, and the eventual solution to the problem is painfully simplistic.
Maybe this kind of light political fantasy would have worked a few decades ago. But at this moment in time, with the beheadings of captured journalists and the kinds of international issues that mire John Kerry in diplomatic impossibilities, the naivete of “Madam Secretary” looks particularly silly. All it takes is a rebellious dreamer to solve the world’s problems and possibly overcome our country’s partisan divide? Leslie Knope, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewGilbert.