For her new series and character, Michelle Dockery — Lady Mary of “Downton Abbey” fame, the most superior and (let’s be honest) tiresome of the Crawley girls — has crossed the ocean, traveled forward in time (to now), become American and acquired a prison record. She’s kept some of the haughtiness that seems in some way her birthright — and the cheekbones and eyes and all that — but within a character that could otherwise not be more different from the one that dominated her professional life for six seasons.
In the smartly played, agonizingly suspenseful “Good Behavior,” which premiered Tuesday on TNT, Dockery plays Letty Raines, a con woman and thief newly on parole, but already back conning and thieving, and backsliding as well, in her attempts to stay clear of drugs and alcohol and reconnect with her young son.
Terry Kinney plays her parole officer, a not untroubled soul going out of his way, and risking his career, to help her stay out of jail.
That is not, however, the main order of business. While robbing a hotel room, Letty finds herself forced to hide in a closet and overhears a conversation between a contract killer (Juan Diego Botto as Javier Pereira) and his client. Attempting to head him off at the pass, she winds up both his prisoner and his accomplice. (Details too spoilery to spill.)