HACK

8 p.m. Friday, CBS

Sometimes you get the feeling a sketch idea escaped from Saturday Night Live and accidentally turned up as a drama.

How else to explain Hack, wherein disgraced ex-cop Mike Olshansky (David Morse, The Green Mile) finds a new career as a cab driver who, when his meter isn't running, moonlights as an avenging angel?

Here's your change, lady. Want me to take care of that stalker for you?

It doesn't help that Morse, who looks and acts as if he's been run over by his own taxi, is as creepy as the lowlifes he's trying to thwart. Nor is it pretty to see powerhouse Andre Braugher (Homicide: Life on the Street) wasting his time as Olshansky's buddy at the cop shop.

It's almost worth tuning in, though, to hear Olshansky call some guy and bully classified information out of him by pretending to be with the Office of Homeland Security. I try that all the time, but people just keep hanging up on me.

E-mail Joanne Weintraub at jweintraub@journalsentinel.com.

Appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Sept. 26, 2002.