Finally got around last night to watching the first episode of the Riches, a new series on FX starring Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver. They play a couple of "travelers" (which I thought was a British-only term). But anyway, they're smalltime grifters and seem to be part of this whole social network of families. I was impressed with how economically they set the story in motion. They did a good job of setting up the characters and their context so that when the plot moments happen, what follows feels natural, almost inevitable. I'm being vague here, I know. But the show's good enough that I don't want to spoil it, in case anyone's deciding whether to watch it. (hint: you should). Izzard has a couple of tour de force scenes. And Driver is amazing. I was impressed that she was willing to look as messed up on camera as her character's supposed to in the story. I saw a quote from Izzard, describing the first version of the pilot as (paraphrase): "well, that was interesting; I never want to go back there." Overall, it was still pretty dark but I felt like I could tell where they'd added stuff to make sure that we liked the main characters and would want to follow their story in future weeks.
ETA: Here's the NYTimes review. They apparently had a chance to view upcoming episodes, since they reference things not in the pilot. Still, I agree with their conclusion, even if the opening paragraph is nearly incoherent, and they get a couple of factoids wrong (cough syrup? I don't think so!)

Speaking of Eddie Izzard, here's a post from a science blog (found via Bookslut) that includes a clip from (one of his standup concerts -- can't remember now; too lazy to look it up). I especially love the comments, which are mostly quotes from other bits of his.