John Powers

When are we locking the door?

You tell me.

Now, it's hardly groundbreaking for a comedy to throw ordinary people into the shark-infested waters of crime.

Yet what matters in pop culture is less originality than verve and commitment.

Although Big Mistakes isn't about much of anything, and the gangster plot is wantonly implausible, it revels in its amusingly awkward situations and clever, fetchy dialogue.

Big Mistakes makes being frantic funny in a way that another new show, The Audacity, does not.

Levy gives his all as Nicky, whose body language betrays emotional blockage, but whose face is a menagerie of stressed-out tics and grimaces.

A sincere man of God, the show respects religious faith, he's a good, orderly person who's easily driven crazy by those who aren't orderly or good.

This means he's perfectly paired with Morgan.

She's the sort of shoot-from-the-hip troublemaker I usually find annoying.

But here, in a career-making performance, Ortega gives their scenes a real zing.

Her run-amok charm plays perfectly off Levy's tension.

They drive each other bats, as only family can.

In a way, each embodies a side of their mother.

It's another memorable role for Metcalf, an astonishingly gifted comedian whose wildly expressive face can, in a microsecond, go from a comedy mask to a tragedy mask and back again.

Herlinda is the show's best character, a self-made woman who's at once principled, hardworking, sexually open, and not a little loopy.

She rides on emotional extremes, but we like her because she's savvy enough to know it.

Now, like other comedic crime shows such as The Lowdown and How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, this eight-part show is best when not focusing on its underworld plot.

The reason to watch is the bi-play between the family members, who bubble with yackety dysfunction, and the moments when the hijinks veer into delirium.

I think you'll enjoy the late-night visit to the cemetery, and Linda wearing the ugliest face paint of all time.