Television - A motherly president paints democracy in nursery shades, writes Andrew Billen Commander in Chief (ABC1)

As George W Bush quoting Franklin D Roosevelt quoting Arthur O'Shaughnessy once said, "For each age is a dream that is dying, or one that is coming to birth." On The West Wing (More4, Fridays, 9pm) the Bartlet administration is limping - literally, in the MS-afflicted president's case - towards its end. Yet the series has been recently reinvigorated by the contest between his potential successors, the Democrats' Matt Santos and the Republicans' Arnold Vinick, as played by Jimmy Smits and Alan Alda. It is a token of this drama's overall smartness that both men are worthy of the office. Even for the liberal intelligentsia who love this show, Alda as the Republican is in one sense superior to the president he may succeed. While Martin Sheen's Bartlet is a rosary-rattling Catholic, Vinick is an agnostic who believes in the separation of church from state.

The cruel fact is, however, that on American television Sheen is being replaced by neither Alda nor Smits. After seven seasons, falling ratings and the death of one of its lead actors, John Spencer, NBC has cancelled the show. Its rival ABC, meanwhile, is running for office with Commander in Chief (here on Tuesdays, 9pm on the digital station ABC1), in which the gimmick is that the capo di tutti capi is a woman. Mackenzie Allen, played by Geena Davis, is, as the posters are saying, "Wife, Mother, Leader" (in America they say "Leader of the Free World"). In the first episode, her six-year-old daughter, Amy, splashes orange juice on Mom's blouse before the inauguration. So shall crises domestic and constitutional collide within the presidential limo.

The pilot episode explains more generally how Allen got to the White House. Although the programme is an exercise in suspension of disbelief, it at least does not ask us to believe she was voted into office. Rather Allen, head of a liberal-arts college, was an independent picked to be the running mate of a macho Republican in order to "balance" his ticket. Two years into office, President Bridges suffers a fatal aneurysm. Allen's first battle is to enforce her constitutional right to succeed, because the received wisdom in the West Wing is that she should resign and allow a Republican to fill another Republican's shoes.

The Republican next in line to the throne is the Speaker of the House, one Nathan Templeton, played by Donald Sutherland as something approaching the devil in-carnate. Allen is almost persuaded to step down, not least by her neo-con teenage daughter, Rebecca (Caitlin Wachs), but Templeton blows it by patronising the acting president's attempts to save a Nigerian woman condemned to death for adultery. The episode ends with a standing ovation at her inauguration (she has to improvise when her autocue fails) and Allen smiling up at her family, which includes, due to a last-minute change of heart, a proud but confused Rebecca, her goody two-shoes twin brother Horace, the infant liability Amy, and their father, Rod, who has been demoted from vice-president's chief of staff to the office of "first gentleman".

Geena Davis brings grace and author- ity to her role but you do long to see her lose her temper, or even her poise. As for Sutherland, you can smell the sulphur from his nostrils. Their shared scenes threaten to ignite. The series plays on the interesting idea that there will be no selflessness in the executive branch until there is an independent in charge unbeholden to any party. Compared to much American television, Commander in Chief is neither pap nor pabulum. But I knew The West Wing. It was my TV buddy. Madam President, your show is no West Wing.

Aside from Davis and Sutherland, it has one of the most boring casts imaginable - a parade of indistinguishable greying, middle-aged men and younger women with dyed blonde hair. The programme cannot decide whether it wants to show the darkness at the heart of the American political system (for that retune to 24) or celebrate the triumph of democracy in nursery shades. Worst, the programme's dialogue is terrible. Any TV patter would suffer in comparison with the baroque wit pioneered by Aaron Sorkin on The West Wing, but here the writers make almost no effort. In the second episode, the president and first gentleman retire to the White House bedroom.

She: I'm so exhausted.

He: It's to be expected. You realise John and Jackie slept here?

She: It's so amazing.

After making its debut in the autumn as the top new drama in the US, Commander in Chief soon lost a third of its audience. Its creator, Rod Lurie, was replaced by a true TV legend, Steven Bochco of Hill Street Blues fame. Bochco declared the drama "a little too broad" - a little? - fired most of the writers and, by some accounts, moved the emphasis from Allen's gender to her agenda. Sadly his efforts have not proved styptic. Last month he in turn was fired. The show has been on "hiatus" and is only now about to return in the US. There is no word yet about a second season. As one of Lurie's cloth-eared writers might put it, the jury's out, there's everything to play for, the American people must decide and only time will tell. Right now, I have to tell you, it feels as if a golden age of television is dying out there on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Andrew Billen is a staff writer on the Times

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