(FX, Monday, 9,00 or 10,00 depending)

Starring Eddie Izzard as Wayne, "The Riches" tells the story of a family of Irish Travellers--what you might call gypsies--from the American South. Wayne refuses to let his daughter be arranged to marry a fellow he describes as a "chromosomal retard" as she's be set up to do by the new boss, and so he singlehandedly plots the family's break with the larger Traveller community.

This is... a shitty description on my part, I grant you, but I hope you will check out one of the rebroadcasts this week--it's nearly impossible to do justice to this show's fantastic pilot in review-form. Which is good.  

James O. Collins' stirring definition of art ("Art results not when there is nothing that can be added, but when there is nothing that can be taken away.") applies: "The Riches" builds its textured and interdependent house upon itself, creating a hermetic and intensely interesting world out of nothing.

Plus, watching con-men work on TV is always fun.

The texture and tone of the series, too, reminds me of nothing so much as Showtime's "Weeds." Dark, beautifully shot, deliberate but not slow. It's not going for laughs as much as Weeds is, but it also seems to have a more focused vision than that show ever had.

"The Riches" is, to undersell, fantastic, heartfelt, daring, smart, brutal, wonderful and funny TV.

It's the best I've seen in years.

Grade: A+