Grammer brilliant in barely seen series

Enlarge Image

Grammer is doing some of the best work of his career on Boss as Chicago mayor Tom Kane.

Is it fun watching absolute power corrupt? Absolutely.

Viewers who watched Kelsey Grammer's anything-but-comedic turn as ruthless Chicago mayor Tom Kane in Season 1 of the made-for-U.S.-cable drama Boss know full well just how entertaining it can be. And when the series' second season has its Canadian-TV premiere this Friday (9 p.m., Super Channel), what the show's small but committed following can expect is much more of the same.

More power. More corruption. And more of Grammer doing some of the most compelling work of his long and stellar (though, admittedly, mostly sitcom-focused) TV-acting career.

"It's funny -- I can't tell you how many people come up to me and say, 'Oh, my God -- that's the best thing I've ever seen you do,'" Grammer related recently during the U.S. networks' summer press tour in Los Angeles. The problem, however, is that Boss airs Stateside on a second-tier cable network, Starz.

"It happens all over the country; whatever city I'm in, somebody runs up and says, 'That new show, Boss ... Wow.' Then, on the flip side, there are people who come up to me and say, 'When are you going back to television?'"

That would equally be the case on this side of the Canada-U.S. divide, where Boss is carried by the country's less-viewed premium pay-TV alternative, Super Channel. But that doesn't make Grammer's effort, or the series, any less worthwhile.

Boss is a unique undertaking that has the epic ambitions of a Shakespearean tragedy and the bloody-knuckled nastiness of a modern-day made-for-cable drama. Unencumbered, for the most part, by traditional-network censorship issues and ratings pressures, it allows Grammer and his castmates to go into the dark corners of TV storytelling that have only been explored by the likes of Tony Soprano, Deadwood's Al Swearengen and The Shield's Vic Mackey.

In Boss's first season, Tom Kane was revealed to be the long-serving mayor of a U.S. city with a long tradition of political corruption. He played the game better than anyone before him, but his grip on power began to slip after he was diagnosed with an incurable neurological disorder that would slowly but inevitably rob him of his faculties and physical abilities.

By season's end, Kane -- obsessed with securing support for the mega-projects he believes will cement his legacy -- had turned on some of the closest people in his inner circle and even sold out his own drug-addicted daughter for political gain.

As the new season opens, the mayor has not lost his single-minded sense of purpose, but as the symptoms of his disease -- physical tremors and, more frighteningly, hallucinations -- intrude more regularly into his life, he begins to consider, without fully accepting, that the end of the road may be nearing.

"Tom, in this part of the story, has discovered that there are gaps in his life that maybe he would like to fill in, or at least try to," Grammer explained. "He realizes that he's not a fully realized human being, and only has so many avenues to explore to actually make that happen.

"So he makes some attempt... but it doesn't go so well."

Something else that didn't go as well as Boss's producers -- Grammer included -- hoped was this year's Emmy-nominations announcement, in which the veteran actor was a notable omission from the best-actor/drama category. "I think Kelsey not getting nominated for his work in this show is a travesty," said series creator Farhad Safinia. "I just don't understand it. Whatever you can say about the show, or the writing, or whether you like it or not, the moment he's in right now and the performance he's giving in this is just simply, undeniably great. The only explanation I can come up with is that perhaps people didn't get a chance to see it."

brad.oswald@freepress.mb.ca

TV PREVIEW

Boss

Starring Kelsey Grammer, Connie Nielsen, Hannah Ware, Jeff Hephner, Jonathan Groff, Kathleen Robertson and Tip "T.I." Harris

Friday at 9 p.m.

Super Channel

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition August 16, 2012 D3