Series starts with a bang

Television pilots, particularly the ones with action, are real productions these days, sometimes upward of $10-million affairs with chase scenes and blow-’em-ups and helicopter shots.

They’re like features -- better than features since they last only an hour and there’s no mall parking. The bait and switch of these lavish premieres, of course, is that two or three episodes in, the big-name director that the producers got for the pilot is gone and the budget is pinched back, and it’s deja vu all over again: somebody playing a cop talking to somebody else playing a cop, the perp 22 script pages away from being caught.

And so it is with “Wanted,” whose splashy debut episode airs Sunday night on TNT. The show stars Gary Cole as Connie Rose, the tough-as-nails head of an elite, extra-legal band of specialists who hunt and gather “the 100 worst bad guys at large in L.A.”

Isn’t that another name for the annual Entertainment Weekly power list? Connie’s team operates out of a warehouse in Long Beach. They’re a misfit band of extraordinary gentlemen plucked from various agencies (FBI, DEA, ATF) and one extraordinary woman, from naval intelligence, who is played by Rashida Jones, the daughter of Quincy Jones and Peggy Lipton.

The series flattens some upon repeat viewing, but the pilot, directed by Davis Guggenheim (not exactly a name, but a name in TV, who’s directed episodes of “Deadwood” and “24” and “Alias”) is a thrill ride. It’s a thrill ride out of the gate: downtown L.A. skyline at night, slick montage of fleeing suspects, mug shots, cop cars -- the whole L.A. bad-guy panorama delivered over gnashing electric guitars.

Then we zoom in: Two undercover cops are parked outside a church. They’re talking about religion and morality. “I’m not going to have sex until I marry a virgin,” one says. “I hate to break the news to you, sunshine, but there ain’t no virgins out there,” the partner says. Just then a priest ambles past. “Let’s go ask him,” the virgin says, but the ensuing colloquy ends quickly and violently. Because this priest ain’t no priest -- he’s a kiddie-rapist escapee from Chino. He was on the list.

There’s another kiddie rapist/convicted murderer prison escapee at large in the pilot -- a more menacing one, with a neck tattoo. Villains with prominent neck tattoos, by the way, are featured on two of the first three episodes. The executive producers of “Wanted” are Aaron Spelling and E. Duke Vincent, whose contributions to the pop culture pantheon are simply too numerous to mention (“The Love Boat,” “Starsky & Hutch,” “Melrose Place,” it’s a veritable Museum of Radio & TV over there).

I’d like to think it was an old hand like Spelling, keeping up with the times, who suggested neck tattoos for the show’s villains, but I doubt it. “Wanted” is violent and somewhat profane -- a formula cop show/fugitive movie shot through with basic-cable permissiveness. But it has Gary Cole, and this is a good thing. I prefer Cole’s deadpan comedy (he was a great Mike Brady in “The Brady Bunch Movie,” and his role as an obsequious boss in “Office Space” is to be cherished). But he’s believable always, including here as a driven cop and loving but absentee father to his son and daughter, whose mother -- played by Deedee Pfeiffer, Michelle’s sister -- he is ambivalently split up with.

“Wanted” has Cole saying things like, “Jimmy, tell Miss Manners why we go into a community that hates our guts looking for info.” He brings it off, of course. There’s a lot of wisecracking in this series; it’s almost over the top. But I suppose it kept me interested as I began to lose interest watching Episodes 2 (no neck tattoo) and 3 (return of the neck tattoo).

As in TNT’s earlier summer offering, “The Closer,” which presented us with Kyra Sedgwick as a Southern-fried cop new to L.A., “Wanted” wants to be a show not just set here but one in which Los Angeles becomes a character. On TV, no one is getting this right yet, not in a revelatory way, although with a show like “Wanted” you get the sense that series co-creator Jorge Zamacona senses an opportunity, anyway, to make something of our urban and exurban sprawl.

So far, though, “Wanted” mostly presents L.A. as a maze, seen from overhead or as in a video game. An episode that takes us into Koreatown doesn’t go much deeper than a restaurant, midday, where everybody’s smoking.

It’s tough: so many bad guys out there, so little time to get to know our neighborhoods.

*

‘Wanted’

Where: TNT

When: 10 p.m. Sunday

Ratings: TV-MA L, S, V (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 17 -- with advisories for strong language, sex and violence)

Gary Cole...Conrad Rose

Ryan Hurst...Jimmy McGloin

Rashida Jones...Carla Merced

Benjamin Benitez...Tommy Rodriquez

Josey Scott...Rodney Gronbeck

Brendan Kelly...Joe Vacco

Chris J. Kelly...Tony Rose

Sasha Pieterse...Millie Rose

Executive producers Aaron Spelling, E. Duke Vincent, Jorge Zamacona. Director Davis Guggenheim. Creators Jorge Zamacona and Louis St. Clair. Teleplay Jorge Zamacona.