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But for "You go, girl!" sentiments of the man-dissing kind, it's hard to top the Sept. 20 pilot of "Family Law." In the first scene, Los Angeles family law attorney Lynn Holt (Kathleen Quinlan) was dumped by her husband/law partner; not only did he run off with another woman, he took most of the firm's lawyers and clients with him, leaving Lynn with their two kids and no income. Lynn was floored, but soon the survival instinct kicks in and she's stealing back clients, hiring a flamboyant divorce lawyer played by Dixie Carter ("I hate men. And I play very dirty"), scraping "men" off the door of the bigger bathroom and turning the urinals into decorative planters. "Family Law" is the most male-unfriendly show since "Designing Women"; it has a symbolically perfect time slot opposite "Monday Night Football."

Lynn's personal crises notwithstanding, "Family Law" is mostly a workplace drama; the cases Lynn and her loyal associate Danni (perky Julie Warner) took on in the pilot represented the various ways marriages and families can go wrong -- ex-spouses squabbling over the ashes of a pet, a recovering junkie who wants to get her sons back from foster parents. Written by co-creators Paul Haggis and Anne Kenney, the pilot episode was unabashedly female-centric (the central theme, echoing through Lynn's situation and the junkie-mom story line, was "What makes a mother?"). But Haggis, who worked on "thirtysomething" and was the guiding hand for the very dark, twisted CBS crime drama "EZ Streets," has juiced "Family Law" with surprising edginess, stinging humor (used sparingly -- this is a traditional drama, not a comedy-drama thing) and the brisk pacing of a cop show. "Family Law" is still a women's show, don't get me wrong, but there are no angels, no ghosts, no fantasy sequences. It's one of the few shows in recent years where women's emotions and lives are deemed dramatically interesting and important enough to stand alone.

It's one of the mysteries of network programming why CBS decided to launch two female-aimed dramas about divorced mothers who work with issues of family law. Like "Family Law," "Judging Amy" is set against the backdrop of broken homes, custody battles and child abuse. And like "Family Law," "Amy" looks at the bright side of its heroines' marital break-ups -- divorce isn't swell, but a family can go through a lot worse.

Many similarities have been pointed out in the press (mea culpa) between "Judging Amy" and NBC's hit "Providence," about a single Los Angeles plastic surgeon who chucks her practice, moves back home to Rhode Island, becomes a family doctor and communes with the advice-dispensing spirit of her dead mother. In "Judging Amy," Los Angeles corporate lawyer Amy Gray (Amy Brenneman) gets divorced, accepts a judgeship back in her hometown of Hartford, Conn., and moves there with her 6-year-old daughter. They live with Amy's widowed mother, Maxine (a gray-haired, crotchety Tyne Daly), once a pioneering social worker and working mom, now a dogmatic busybody puttering unhappily through retirement. Maxine dispenses advice, but Amy has to hack through layers of crusty mom-speak to glean it.

In tone, "Judging Amy" isn't much like the soft-focus, sentimental "Providence" at all. Writer-producers John Tinker, Barbara Hall, Bill D'Elia and their intelligence-radiating star (who also gets a producer credit) have turned out a crisply entertaining drama that's as crammed-full as Amy's docket. The show's concerns include divorce and combining career and single parenthood, of course, but also aging, growing up, the search for personal fulfillment, parents who can't let go and the volatile relationship between mothers and daughters (Brenneman and Daly are well-matched sparring partners).

Brenneman's Amy is believably overextended trying to smooth daughter Lauren's transition to their new life while simultaneously learning the ropes as a family court judge. Amy is cranky, she's tired, she has doubts and guilt about what leaving her marriage is doing to her kid. And she's got to do it all under the long shadow of Maxine, a living legend. But Amy is a true working-mom heroine. She takes too much on, then miraculously finds a way to deliver; to fall apart would be giving ammunition to those she feels are sitting in judgment of her -- her mother, her daughter, her ex, her boss, the stay-at-home mothers at Lauren's school. The show's central irony is that Amy feels like she's in over her head as a judge who has to decide cases based on the best interest of the child when she's not even sure what's best for her own child. Amy has yet to figure out what Maxine has learned about decision-making: Look authoritative and fake it.

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