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 "Without a Trace"
10 tonight on CBS (8046) Grade: B+ If the theme song of "CSI" is "Who Are You," the one for "Without a Trace" could be "Where Are You." The new CBS mystery isn't a whodunit but a wheredeyat. Anthony LaPaglia stars as Jack Malone, senior agent in the Missing Persons Squad of the FBI, whose job it is to try to track down the recently vamoosed within the first two days of their disappearance. "In most cases, after 48 hours they're gone," he explains. His team of investigators includes the film-noirishly monikered Samantha Spade (Poppy Montgomery), Vivian Johnson (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), Danny Taylor (Enrique Murciano) and Martin Fitzgerald (Eric Close). Their job: to ask questions, hit the New York City pavement and try to piece together the scenario that explains where the missing person is, dead or alive, and if foul play is afoot. "Without a Trace" is the latest CBS show to groove on police procedural jargon, cool investigative gadgets and Jerry Bruckheimer as its executive producer. In other words, every similarity to "CSI" is absolutely intentional. Each episode (or at least the first two made available for review) sketches out the psychological profiles of friends, family and lovers of the person. Secrets come out under pressure, assumptions unravel, and in the right light, everyone can look like a suspect. That includes the missing subject, who may have lammed it without leaving a see-ya-later note. As Malone says of tonight's MIA subject, "Everyone we talk to, we see a different Maggie." (We also see the woman literally through flashbacks that gradually piece together the mystery, allowing for some crafty camera work.) Like "CSI" (both versions), the show is a tightly run machine. Also like "CSI," it promises to rip subjects from the headlines. Next week's episode centers on the disappearance of an 11-year-old boy, a tender topic after months of child abductions highly profiled in the media. The series' knack for exploiting our national paranoias may not be exactly good for you, but it does make for some gripping moments. The elegantly shot show is peppered with overhead views of the city that underscore how easy it is to go missing there. But tech credits mean nothing without good actors, and in LaPaglia "Trace" has a still, compelling center. He brings ballast and authority, and Jean-Baptiste (an Oscar nominee for "Secrets & Lies") is his female equal in the acting department. (Tonight, her character tosses off a "cheerio" in-joke about London; the actress plays a Yank here, but she's actually British.)
As for the rest of the cast, they're perfectly acceptable members of that Screen Actors Guild sub-demographic known in the TV biz as Eye Candy.
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