Oct 12, 2008 Filed Under: News & Rumours,The Starter Wife Comments (0)

After earning a surprising ten Emmy nominations for its initial run as a mini-series last season, “The Starter Wife” returns as a regular series this year on the USA net. Back for more misadventures are Hollywood divorcee Debra Messing and her dipsomaniac pal Judy Davis. With generally good reviews, could this frothy fun find more Emmy success as a series? As the series races are more crowded than the movie/mini ones, the best bet to get nods are the two stars who have winning track records in the awards derby.

“The Starter Wife” marks the return to series TV for “Will & Grace” star Debra Messing, who earned both Emmy and Golden Globe nods for the mini. She lost the Emmy to Helen Mirren for the final “Prime Suspect” and the Globe to Queen Latifah for “Life Support.” Messing was the last of the quartet on “Will & Grace” to take home an Emmy, winning on nod No. 4 in 2003. Supporting players Sean Hayes and Megan Mullally won in 2000 (Mullally also won for the show’s final season in 2006) while lead Eric McCormack won in 2001. All four were snubbed by the Golden Globes as was the show, with Messing’s six losses there part of a 0-27 record.

“The Starter Wife” is the first regular role for Judy Davis who won an Emmy for her supporting work in the original min-series last year. She took home that same prize in 1995 for “Serving in Silence” and has piled up an impressive seven noms for lead actress in a mini or movie, winning for her bravura 2001 turn as Judy Garland in “Me and My Shadows.” While Davis was not nominated in that catchall supporting category at the Globes for the mini-series she has two wins there – for “Me and My Shadows and back in 1992 for the TV movie “One Against the Wind.”

Among those good reviews, Robert Bianco of USA Today lavishes praise on Messing, calling her “everything the show requires: glamorous, downtrodden, sexy, maternal, touching, funny, brittle, warm and thoroughly, beautifully appealing.” Robert Lloyd of The Times says, “Davis, Emmy notwithstanding, is also better served this time out. Her hapless alcoholism in the first season grew wearing. Now sober and working as a chauffeur-minder for a rehab spa and saddled with the care of a difficult Irish actor (Daniel Gerroll) with whom she will probably have an affair, she gets to be funny and spiky and not just out of control.” And as per Entertainment Weekly, “The show is well worth committing to.”