Jonathan Storm | Family love among thieves is heart of 'The Riches'

We had to wait a long time, but the best new TV show of the 2006-07 season premieres tonight.

Rejoice, all you smart, rich, discriminating TV-watchers, crying in your Grey Goose or Glenfiddich since Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip got the hook. The Riches fills its old Mondays-at-10 p.m. time slot. It overflows from it. But you'll have to make a little effort. It's on cable's FX, up there in 70s or 80s somewhere, on different channels depending on where you live.

Studio 60 operated in the esoteric world of TV production. The Riches straddles two forbidding worlds: the open spaces that are home to a clan of thieves and con men known as the Travellers, and the cloistered McMansion environs of the suburbs.

But its core is a place we all know: the family. Rarely has family love been portrayed more strongly than on The Riches, and the heart of that love comes through in the breathtaking performances of British actors Minnie Driver and Eddie Izzard. The three kids, Shannon Woodward, Noel Fisher and little Aidan Mitchell, are no slouches, either.

"The American Dream," says papa Wayne Malloy, toward the end of tonight's premiere, "we're going to steal it." (Izzard got angry at me when I asked him about two limeys playing leads in such a uniquely American story, but if you've seen any of his Britboy transvestite standup bits, you can't help but marvel at the transformation. And Londoner Driver, with her lazy drawl and ferocious personality, is even more spectacular.)

Through various captivating twists, the Malloys find themselves forging an entirely new life, in what seems to be the biggest house of all in the gated community of Edenfalls, Miss. This is particularly unusual since it doesn't belong to them, and some family members believe that if you go to sleep in a building, you will wake up with no soul.

The Malloys are Travellers, part of a large band of closely related Irish Americans who live outside society and the law. Real Travellers have lived in Ireland for centuries, and in the United States, primarily in the South, perhaps since the Revolution.

It's hard to say, and it doesn't really matter, how authentic The Riches is in their portrayal. The show creates a heavily strictured hothouse world, ironic since it's populated by freewheeling wanderers, and it will examine what happens when one family tries to leave it.

We see this milieu as exotic and slightly ominous. Lo and behold, the Malloys find life in the mainstream of supposedly solid citizens ("buffers," the Travellers call them) to be much more bizarre. Part of the joy of the show is that contrast.

It's a fertile field for humor, as well as drama, and playwright Dmitry Lipkin, who created the show and has firsthand experience with its basic theme, having moved from Moscow to Louisiana without a word of English when he was 10, tills it well.

The Riches has a strong Desperate Housewives vibe, except it features more than wives, and everybody's way more desperate. Margo Martindale (who played a sort of mentor psychic on Medium), as next-door neighbor Nina Burns, and Gregg Henry (Logan's father on Gilmore Girls), as real estate manipulator Hugh Panetta, demonstrate that, in some areas, the chasm between Traveller and buffer may be not so wide.

People with fine sensibilities should be warned that, on the grid of TV permissiveness, FX lies between the broadcasters and HBO (though you can bet the folks at HBO are jealous of this artistic triumph). Not as vulgar as the speech on The Sopranos, Deadwood or The Wire, the language can be rude, but not outright crude, and the sex might be lewd, but never nude.

Crucially, any liberties taken in this program that might offend the family values faction are integral to the story, unlike the action in so many TV shows and movies that resort to titillation because they can't entrance an audience with real drama.

Tonight, mom and dad Malloy make love in a thoroughly non-arousing, but stunningly loving sex scene that provides a giggle at the end.

It's just one of a wealth of surprisingly satisfying moments that make The Riches a true treasure.

TV Review

The Riches

Debuts tonight at 10 on FX