Now and Again

Watching the new series Now and Again, you realize how little pure playfulness there is in prime-time programming. I'm not talking about the relentless joke making that goes on in sitcoms good and bad; I mean the sort of light, airy humor that we most often used to get from movies (in nearly any Cary Grant film, for example, or in the chatty flights of fancy of Preston Sturges' comedies).

Now and Again — starring Eric Close as a human brain encased in a ripped bod created by our government — toys with and confounds its audience's expectations in a way that no other TV show has since Ally McBeal in its first season, and does so with considerably more grace. That Now and Again not to be confused with ABC's entrancing divorcee divertissement Once and Again — comes from producer-writer Glenn Gordon Caron only adds to the unexpectedness of this new show's artfulness. Caron was the creator of Moonlighting, the 1985-89 show that started off cleverly, then slowly but steadily turned Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd into annoying dingbats to be avoided.

If you watched Now and Again's pilot, you know that a weary, middle-aged insurance salesman, played to portly perfection by John Goodman, was accidentally rammed by a New York City subway car. When, a few seconds later, we were meant to believe that Goodman's jowly, lovable Michael Wiseman had been replaced by Close's pretty-boy Wiseman, you probably shouted at the screen the same thing I did: ''I want my John Goodman back!'' But Caron's nervy and frustrating opening soon began to pay off.

While not an actor in possession of the presence or audience goodwill that Goodman has, Close is no bland robot; he quickly establishes his own wry, quizzical personality. His mind transplanted into a superior human container, Wiseman is faced with a classic dilemma: He can remain alive — to use his superhumanly strong body to defeat threats to national security — but he must never reveal to his wife and daughter the person he has become. If he spills the beans, our government will spill his — and his family's — blood.

Thus, Wiseman, unrecognizable to his family, stands in the shadows and looks longingly at Margaret Colin (and who wouldn't?). Playing his wife, Lisa, Colin is a bit tremulous and tentative, just as a grieving widow might be. CBS has been trying to turn Colin into a TV star for years, but until now the net has channeled her tart intelligence and wide-eyed beauty into characters on lawyer-themed clunkers like The Wright Verdicts, Legwork, and Foley Square, and into a nothing role in Chicago Hope. In Now and Again she's finally free to be complicated: vulnerable, angry, and perplexed by her husband's death, yet resourceful and strong, providing support for daughter Heather, played with a refreshing lack of smart-aleckiness by Welcome to the Dollhouse's Heather Matarazzo.