Drop the Oscar. Grab a gun -- and a sex life

Compared to the neurotics, moms, and ingenues that Holly Hunter is best known for playing, her character in the new TNT drama "Saving Grace" is virtually unrecognizable. In the first episode, which premieres on July 23 , she has sex with a married man, then chastises him for feeling guilty. She shows her naked body to an elderly neighbor, waves a gun in front of a pair of elementary school kids, and drives drunk. She's a hedonist.

She's also a cop.

Indeed, Grace Hanadarko is a far cry from most of the female cops on TV, whose edginess is generally defined as a tendency to sass superiors. You'd be hard-pressed to find a woman so rough-hewn on network TV -- or, as Hunter herself points out, in film. She was attracted to "the largeness of her," Hunter said in a telephone interview last month. "And the fact that she held such darkness. Such black. And such lightness, all in the same person. And I kind of felt like her sexual life was a really stunning one. A beautiful one to get to talk about."

It's the sort of role, in short, that might induce an Oscar-winning actress (Hunter won in 1994 for "The Piano") to join a basic cable series. Once, the idea would have been anathema -- just as, not so long ago, taking a TV role itself carried a stigma. But as networks gravitate toward ensemble fare -- the long tail of successful series such as "Lost" and "Grey's Anatomy" -- it's the basic cable channels that are offering more star vehicles for actresses. Tonight, Lili Taylor premieres in "State of Mind," a Lifetime series about a family therapist. On July 24, FX will debut "Damages," starring Glenn Close as an unscrupulous lawyer. Kyra Sedgwick has earned wide acclaim as the lead in TNT's "The Closer."

"It's become a bit of a new frontier for actors who are wanting something that's riskier," Hunter says of cable, in part because the stakes are lower. In major studio films and network television shows, she says, more money is on the line, and "they have to kind of pander to the masses."

Cable, in a sense, has the opposite goal. To distinguish its shows from network fare -- and to live up to the standards of boldness set by HBO and Showtime -- some have rushed to be as dark and different as possible. USA -- which made a name for itself with "Monk," about an obsessive-compulsive detective -- has tried to build an identity on aggressively quirky characters. ABC Family has experimented with science fiction ("Kyle XY") and frat-house sex ("Greek").

And the boundary-busting lineup on FX, including "Nip/Tuck" and "Rescue Me," has helped FX to attract its own cadre of film actors, most notably Close, who spent a season guest-starring on "The Shield."

Still, even in the world of cable TV, Hunter's character in "Saving Grace" is a stretch, a woman who explicitly is going to hell. That's the premise of the show, in fact; as she solves crimes and sleeps around, Grace also has to contend with Earl, a "last chance angel" sent from God to save her from herself. He takes the form of a wisecracking, tobacco-chewing redneck -- albeit one with wings -- and he has to fight, quite literally, for her soul. In the series' second episode, Grace and Earl dive into a wrestling match, which ends when he cosmically removes one of her arms.

The point is to force Grace to explore her relationship with God. Set in Oklahoma City, where Grace is surrounded by churchgoers and true believers, this is a series about spirituality: "Joan of Arcadia" painted black and set on fire. But as Hunter points out, "Saving Grace" is also about sex.

That's partly because Grace is defined by nobody else: "She's not a woman who's married. She's not a woman who has children. . . . She is not somebody's girlfriend." She only feels responsible for her own desires.

"She looks at herself almost as an object," Hunter says. "Sexuality is often romanticized. And Grace looks at it like, 'That can be a lot of fun.' "

It's a subject, Hunter suspects, that only cable would have the stomach -- and the freedom -- to fully explore. And for actresses in their 40s and beyond -- including TV veterans who risk getting lost in the networks' search for new faces -- cable offers the sorts of roles that might not be available anywhere else. Kim Delaney, whose TV credits include "Law & Order: SVU," "The O.C.," and "NYPD Blue," is first among equals in the ensemble drama "Army Wives," Lifetime's best-rated series to date.

And sitcom roles are more abundant on cable, as well. Actress Nancy Travis, who most recently starred in CBS's "Becker," wanted to land a multicamera comedy -- it offers a great schedule for a working mom -- and found it in TBS's "The Bill Engvall Show," an old-school family comedy aimed at the middle-American ethos. (Travis, who plays a stay-at-home mom, said in an interview last week that she's "trying very hard not to make it so old-fashioned," urging script changes when her character teeters too close to June Cleaver.)

Moving from film to television, of course, presents its own attractions and challenges. Hunter has starred in TV movies -- and won Emmys for two -- but had never taken part in a series. She says she loves the collaboration on the set, the opportunity to work with writers and actors more than once. But the breakneck pace of filming a serial drama, she says, has been an education.

"It's nonstop. It requires as much of me as I've ever given in my life. And it's required stamina that I didn't know I had," Hunter says. "[Grace] gets around, you know. In all ways. And so I've had to get around, too."

Joanna Weiss can be reached at weiss@globe.com. For more on TV, go to viewerdiscretion.net.