Attorney Keegan Deane can’t catch a break. In the opening scene of Fox’s new series “Rake,” he’s enjoying a football game in a bar with a bunch of rowdy fans when he takes a bathroom break, accompanied by his bookie. Minutes later, the bookie has bashed Deane’s head against the yellow bathroom tiles — he’s $15,000 in debt. Next day, he gets pulled over by the cops for driving with an expired license and wastes a lot of time trying to sell a Pacific Bluefin tuna— given to him by a client as payment for services — to pay off the bookie.
“Rake,” which debuts tonight at 9 p.m., presents another variation of a popular TV type: the highly functioning addict. Deane, as played by Greg Kinnear, has a huge gambling problem and he’s not particularly interested in reform. Like many addicts, he’s expert at surrounding himself with people who will clean up his messes: his best friend, Ben (John Ortiz), his ex-wife, Maddy (Miranda Otto) and his assistant, Leanne (Tara Summers). When it comes to romance, the only kind he can find is with his favorite prostitute, Mikki (Bojana Novakovic), whose favorite phrase seems to be, “Time’s up!”
Charm and an oblivious attitude carry Deane a long way, in life and in the courtroom, where he represents a motley bunch of seemingly irredeemable characters — serial killers, cannibals and even a guy into bestiality. If anyone can pull off this high-wire act, it’s Kinnear, who still, so many years after “Talk Soup,” has lotsa charisma.
The actor, now 50, has a good fix on Deane’s idiosyncracies. “He had a fairly domesticated marriage with a woman who realized there was no future with him, but he has a son,” he says. “So, there was a time when there was an attempt to find a decent road with a stronger moral compass. Eventually, letting go of that was probably quite liberating for him. I don’t think this guy wants to be locked into the time clock punching, obligatory world the rest of us belong to.”
Kinnear, who has been married for years and has three children, will admit to sharing a couple of traits with his TV character, though. “I’m a bad gambler. And I like bourbon.”
Creator Peter Duncan, who adapted this series from his Australian original (also named “Rake”), wanted Kinnear for the role because of his beguiling personality. “In the discussions of who could play the rakish aspect of the character, we wanted someone who could get away with a lot,” he says. “What we found in Australia was that if these women [who] are strong, independent and diverse are prepared to stand by him, there’s something worthy in the shenanigans he causes.”
Duncan is not worried that having a prostitute as a series regular might raise the blood pressure of conservative TV watchdogs.
“Fox said, ‘We want the show to be like the show we liked [in Australia],’ ” he says. “Fox wanted us to be bold.”
Kinnear says that storyline has more than meets the eye. “People find love in strange places,” he says. “That he’s found himself spending time with a prostitute is interesting. She ends up being a surprising person.”
He also served as the show’s unofficial location scout, taking Duncan for a drive far from the Sony lot in Culver City to edgy Echo Park. where Deane lives in shabby accommodations.
“It’s old California butted up against a little bit of wealth there,” he says. “It’s a confusing place but the right zone for Deane.”
Kinnear returns to television in this role after a starry career in movies that included an Oscar-nominated role as gay painter in “As Good As It Gets,” box-office hits such as “Little Miss Sunshine” and a kinky turn as murdered “Hogan’s Heroes” star Bob Crane in “Auto-Focus.” Not a bad track record for a guy who “started out as a drama major and then switched to journalism. I didn’t have a great game plan. I kind of kicked around at different jobs.”
“Rake” will have 13 episodes in all and premieres a couple of weeks before the Olympics. Duncan admits that holding onto an audience might be an uphill battle.
“It changes things for us,” he says, “but fortune favors the brave.”