Hollywood July 23, 2003 (eXoNews) - If you can take the gore, Nip/Tuck is the best new TV show of 2003. The premise, which I doubted heavily until I saw the FX "sneak preview" last night, centers on the adventures of two plastic surgeons in Miami.

This is not a show for everyone. A constant barrage of previews and pop-ups on FX and other stations warned that Nip/Tuck would be graphic, but I don't usually go for medical dramas so I must admit that I wasn't prepared to watch an ass lift.

I suspected a black comedy was afoot, because Nip/Tuck was co-created and produced by Ryan Murphy, who did the same with the WB series Popular (1999-2001), and I know Julian McMahon has a gift for understated comedy, but an excellent cast and superior writing on the pilot proved Nip/Tuck is very much the first-class drama FX claimed it to be.

McMahon stars as Dr. Christian Troy, a dark slick who admits to being a better salesman than surgeon, and Dylan Walsh as Dr. Sean McNamara, his somewhat nerdy and moral partner.

McMahon played Cole Turner on Charmed from 2000-2003, and he brings some of that angry demon with him to this new role. Christian Troy is an unscrupulous stud, mostly interested in conning his hotter patients into the sack with a little nip and tuck while making a personal fortune. Walsh as Sean McNamara is his alter ego, a brilliant surgeon who has had enough of lifting already perfect Miami breasts and wants to help people who really need his talents but also has a dysfunctional family to support.

In the ninety-minute pilot, the two are convinced to hide the face of a gangster on the run who turns out to be a loathsome pedophile with other gangsters on his trail. Once the truth is known, the good doctor McNamara flips out and tries to leave the semi-bad Troy, but his home life gets in the way.

And here's where Nip/Tuck really scored with me in an amazing performance by Joely Richardson as the good doctor McNamara's wife Julia. Miss Richardson, the daughter of late director Tony Richardson, is known mostly for lighter support and comedic roles on film, but she pulled out all the stops in the pilot episode, especially in a dialogue where she told her husband off for drowning her in his mid-life crisis.

Richardson was simply riveting! Jaw-dropping, Best Actress stuff, so let's hope the Television Academy and Golden Globes were watching.

The supporting cast was also good, especially John Hensley as the good doctor's son Matt McNamara.

Hensley will be familiar to genre fans from Witchblade, where he played Gabriel Bowman, Yancy Butler's occasional teenage hacker sidekick. Character actress Roma Maffia was also on hand briefly as anesthesiologist Liz Winters.

Nip/Tuck has all the promise missing from "big" network shows. It isn't family fare, doesn't have a predominantly teenage cast and it obviously isn't afraid of shocking realism or controversy (plastic surgeons won't like it.)

Nip/Tuck is aimed way out of the box and thinking adults should give it a chance.

[The premiere episode viewers did give it a chance. Zap2it reports that Nip/Tuck won a 3.2 household rating and over 3.7 million viewers, making it "the top new series cable premiere of 2003." Ed.]

Tune in to Nip/Tuck on FX Network at 10 PM Tuesdays.

Official Nip/Tuck site - http://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/originals/niptuck

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