UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. — Well, at least there's not a National Poker League that's going to come down on ESPN for its second dramatic series, "Tilt."
The sports network, of course, buckled under pressure from the National Football League and canceled its otherwise relatively successful first dramatic series, "Playmakers."
At least ESPN execs are honest about why they axed the first show, if not entirely forthcoming about how they chose the second. Which has a lot to do with not risking the wrath of the NFL, the NBA or major-league baseball.
"We walk a fine line. . . . We have various constraints that other entertainment networks don't when it comes to scripted dramas," said Mark Shapiro, ESPN's executive vice president of programming and production. "We're partners with half these leagues. And their brands being tarnished potentially is bad for our business."
And, not surprisingly, NFL chieftains thought that portraying professional football players as drug abusers, philanderers, criminals, wife-beaters and so on didn't make ESPN's NFL partners particularly happy.
"They thought that from day one with 'Playmakers,' " Shapiro said. "They didn't want us to launch the series."
And NFL chieftains made their unhappiness clear "every week" the series was on. Which led to its cancellation.
ESPN is also the TV home of the World Series of Poker, but the gambling tournament's sponsor — Harrah's casinos — is apparently more understanding than the NFL.
"Fortunately, they understand what we're doing," Shapiro said. "They understand that we're not going to be gratuitous, but they also understand that, as a drama, we're going to have some grittiness and we're going to have some darkness that is going to have to be there as a necessary component to bring a critical mass audience."
Like "Playmakers" before it, "Tilt" (tonight at 7, 8 and 10 p.m.) is a show without much of anybody to root for. I'm not at all certain what that says about the powers that be at ESPN or their outlook on life, but this is not a show populated by characters who are role models.
The show's central character is, well, not a particularly nice guy. Don Everest (Michael Madsen) is a champion poker player who doesn't exactly play fair, and who isn't above using violence to intimidate people — something he clearly demonstrates before the first hour is over.
He's known as "The Matador" because he lures in young poker players and then kills them. Not literally, of course. At least not all the time.
The nominal "good guys" are also gamblers who have all been wronged by Everest, although when and how we don't find out in the premiere. Eddie Towne (Eddie Cibrian of "Third Watch") is as close as we get to a hero, but he's a young card shark himself who has taken advantage of more than his share of people,
Eddie is joined by Clark Marcellin (Todd Williams), another young hotshot, and Miami (Kristin Lehman), another gambler who uses anything she can — including sex — to get what she wants.
They've got some big plot to bring down the Matador . . . but we don't know what that is yet.
Also thrown into the mix is a small-town cop (Chris Bauer) who's out for revenge against the Matador. But he, too, doesn't much care what laws he breaks along the way.
Not that a TV series has to be full of saints in order to be entertaining. But it does have to be full of characters and story lines that are both compelling and comprehensible, and "Tilt" is short on both counts.
It's not just that the poker scenes won't make total sense if you aren't a player (and they don't); it's not just that the premiere is long on style and short on substance (and it is); it's certainly not that that the first hour poses a lot more questions than it answers (which it does).
The fatal flaw is that, after watching the first hour, there's no compelling reason to come back for the other eight episodes to find out the answers.
"Tilt" just doesn't seem to be worth investing the time.
E-mail: pierce@desnews.com