Old, familiar faces

Globe and Mail - Canada - Television recycles ideas, but rarely talent.

The trend in recent years toward reality-TV and younger-skewed programming has turned TV into a talent turnstile: every season introduces a new crop of people, who flare brightly, briefly, then drop off the face of the earth. Every so often, though, it’s nice to see a familiar face.

The first week of the TV critics tour saw a select few blasts from the past. Among the most notable, the incoming fall season will see the TV return of Jimmy Smits, a fine actor best known to viewers from several seasons on NYPD Blue. Smits stars in the new CBS series Cane, a highly touted family drama in the vein of The Sopranos.

Cane has one of the largest casts of any new fall series, with Smits playing the patriarch of an affluent Latino family in Florida’s sugar-cane industry. The series also stars veteran Hispanic actors Hector Elizondo and Rita Moreno.