'Madam Secretary' makes it look easy

Madam Secretary
CBS, Sunday, 8:30 ET/8 PT

*** out of four

A great secretary can mask a multitude of sins.

It's true in most offices — and it's true for Madam Secretary, CBS's new companion piece for The Good Wife. In the first thre e episodes available for preview, the show struggles somewhat to make its ripped-from-the-headlines crises and its secondary characters ring true. But as the newly appointed secretary of state, star Tea Leoni is appealingly believable from her very first scene, and finding her buys the show some time to find itself.

Leoni plays Elizabeth McCord, a former CIA agent and current university professor with a loving husband (an equally appealing Tim Daly) and three children — only two of whom you'll see Sunday. When the current secretary of state dies in a plane crash, the president (the always-welcome Keith Carradine) pressures Elizabeth to take the job.

His chief of staff (Zeljko Ivanek) doesn't like her. Her own staff (led by the fabulous Bebe Neuwirth) is wary of her. But a few hours in, you can sense them coming around.

And really, how couldn't they? As created by Barbara Hall (Judging Amy), Elizabeth is a wonder on all levels: a funny, smart, tough woman capable of charming an African prince with her smile and intimidating a congressman with her golf swing. It can all be a bit much: Elizabeth needs to be wrong now and then. Still, against considerable odds, Leoni sells it, conveying the brains and toughness Elizabeth needs to be successful in her job and the warmth, vulnerability and sometimes prickly humor she needs to be successful at home.

She is successful as a wife and mother, by the way, which makes for a nice change after so many TV heroes who are great at work and lousy at life. The domestic scenes between Daly and Leoni, which could have been a drag, are instead some of Secretary's better moments, giving us a glimpse of a (rare for TV) marriage that seems sturdy without stretching to problem-free.

Unfortunately, the maturity conveyed by the stars in those scenes doesn't always follow through to the rest of the episode. Unlike The West Wing, Secretary doesn't trust us to follow political and personal stories without the added juice of a Homeland/Scandal-style conspiracy. For now, that story stays mainly in the background, but sooner or later, you know it will rear its tired head.

Worse, unlike Good Wife, Secretary seems to fear that anything but the most straightforward plotting will lose us. Twists are too few, solutions too simple, and knowing moments too often canceled out by silly ones.

You want us to believe Elizabeth can handle anything thrown at her? Fine. Now how about believing we can, too.