The based-on-fact drama The Cleaner made A&E history during its first season. Starring Law & Order‘s Benjamin Bratt, Battlestar Galactica‘s Grace Park, Level 9‘s Esteban Powell, and 24‘s Amy Price-Francis, the original series averaged 4.2 million viewers overall and comparably high numbers in key demographics, making it the basic-cable network’s top-rated show ever. The Cleaner returns tonight (June 23) at 10pm ET to repeat that success during its second season.

The premiere episode “Hello America” features Oscar-winning guest star Whoopi Goldberg (The View, Ghost) as extreme interventionist William Banks’ (Bratt) former sponsor, Pauline Kmec, who now sponsors a well-known television news anchor and supposedly recovered addict named Davis (Gary Cole; The West Wing, American Gothic). When his wife Michelle’s (Jayne Brook; Private Practice, John Doe) battle with cancer becomes too stressful, Davis falls back into his old habits, motivating Michelle to contact William and his team members Akani Cuesta (Park) and Arnie Swenton (Powell) for one of their familiar life-saving interventions.

If you’ve watched The Cleaner just once, you already know the drill: person asks for help with a difficult and rapidly declining addict, Team William analyzes the situation to determine the necessity and then the best strategy for abducting the fallen addict, complications ensue, lapsed addict eventually sees the error of his or her ways most of the time, and William has regular conversations with God throughout.

What makes The Cleaner resonate with viewers isn’t that routine, however, but rather the actual people involved in the process and their individual stories. The second-season premiere has some scenes with interesting camera work, a few very funny segments (just wait for the beach incident, for instance), good acting all around, and an especially nice yet heartwrenching twist that builds up to one of the most touching final scenes ever on the show, and there have been a few.

On the personal front, William and his estranged wife Melissa (Price-Francis) remain typically torn about the status of their relationship, despite their obvious love for one another. Those persistent feelings are one reason why William agrees to help put up a shiny happy front for her sake when her parents (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit‘s Mariette Hartley and The O.C.‘s Barry Newman) arrive for a visit. The older couple are a challenge in their own right, but the masquerade isn’t all for nothing, as viewers see eventually.

All in all, “Hello America” is exactly what fans have come to expect from The Cleaner, so they won’t be disappointed. Those who haven’t sampled the series yet but are curious shouldn’t have any problems following the action, either, because each new episode introduces a different addict with a relatively unique set of issues to overcome.

Benjamin Bratt‘s (Law & Order, pictured at right above with co-stars Esteban Powell and Grace Park) intriguing A&E drama The Cleaner returns to the tube tomorrow, June 23, at 10pm ET. If you watched the first season, you already know what the series is all about. If not, gain some insight in the video after jump, which includes brief comments from the show’s cast and crew.

Noteworthy guest stars on tap for the second go-round include The View‘s Whoopi Goldberg in the season opener “Hello America,” as well as — take a deep breath — Jonathan Adams (Bones), Alice Amter (The Big Bang Theory), Joe Don Baker (Strange Wilderness), Raymond J. Barry (Cold Case), Michael Beach (Stargate Atlantis), Noah Bean (Damages), Sterling Beaumon (Lost), Rachel Boston (The Ex List), Tom Bower (Appaloosa), Jeanette Brox (Heroes)…

…Madeline Carroll (Swing Vote), Kate del Castillo (Julia), Gary Cole (The West Wing), Charles Esten (Big Love), Nasser Faris (24), Janina Gavankar (The L Word), Rebecca Gayheart (Vanished), Taylor Handley (Southland), Shirley Jones (The Patridge Family), Mia Kirshner (The L Word), Maxim Knight (Our First Christmas)…

…Christine Lahti (Obsessed), Steve Landesberg (Head Case), Jamie McShane (Sons of Anarchy), Joel McKinnon Miller (Big Love), Lori Petty (House M.D.), Ingrid Rogers (All My Children), Diana Scarwid (Pushing Daisies), Paul Schulze (The Sopranos), Samantha Shelton (Monarch Cove), Jon Sklaroff (The Beast), Brian Van Holt (John From Cincinnati), and Tyler James Williams (Everybody Hates Chris). Woot!

I’ll be back tomorrow with an advance review of the new season’s first episode, so enjoy the theatrical preview below in the meantime.

…who goes by the name Susan G.

Susan’s favorite Benjamin Bratt TV show is the ever popular Law & Order, and I’m sure she’ll enjoy catching up on the actor’s film work while watching all of the movies she’s going to receive in her prize package.

Thanks to everyone who participated in this giveaway and especially to the sponsors A&E Network and Electric Artists.

On July 15, A&E premiered its new Benjamin Bratt drama The Cleaner, which stars the Law & Order alum as William Banks, a character based on real-life addiction counselor Warren Boyd. Banks promises God he will help other addicts recover if he’s granted a second chance to live “clean.”

The pilot episode of the series introduced viewers to Banks’ core team members who assist him on handpicked cases: Akani Cuesta (Grace Park), a trash-talking and overly playful rich girl; Arnie Swenton (Esteban Powell), the group’s constantly whining go-to man; and following the death of Banks’ close friend Mickey Efros (Gil Bellows), a used-car dealer named Darnell McDowell (Kevin Michael Richardson), whose brother was saved by Banks.

A promising high school athlete who became a wasted meth addict soon after his father’s death provided the Addict of the Week plot during the pilot episode to demonstrate how Banks and his team resolve the cases they decide to pursue. The storyline was disappointing since it failed to create any sense of urgency or tension, which should be a routine matter on a series that describes its main character as an “extreme” interventionist.

The July 22 second episode “Rag Dolls” fares a little better … at first. Once again, the show focuses on a younger addict, an 18-year-old surfer girl. Her mother approaches Banks for help because intuition tells her something is wrong, although her daughter has passed two drug tests and maintains great grades at school.

Sure enough, after a few contrived scenes where Banks’ associates, working undercover, conveniently find very obvious clues at just the right moment (how can you miss the implications of someone drinking glycerin out of a water bottle?), we learn the teenager and her clearly messed-up best friend are drug mules for a dangerous thug-dealer, played generically by Kevin Alejandro of Ugly Betty, Shark, and the July 17 episode of Burn Notice called “Turn and Burn” (he’s really getting around these days — good for him).

A side storyline has Banks and his wife Melissa (Amy Price-Francis) getting called to their daughter’s Catholic school, where the nun in charge reveals the problem is the little girl’s perfection. The ultimate moral of that plot diversion is that perfection isn’t good since mistakes help human beings mature and develop. You don’t say!

For an episode that starts off on such an intriguing note — with surfer girl in a dark, nondescript bathroom desperately attempting to help another clearly dying girl hang onto life as her messed-up best friend repeatedly warns her to hurry up and leave the girl and the place — “Rag Dolls” ends up being a big disappointment.

If you believe the final scenes, all you have to do to make your life better after a balloon of heroin bursts inside you, nearly causing you to die, is grab a long board — that somebody gave to you as a gift, no less, to acknowledge your surviving the balloon incident — and head to the beach to find a big wave.

Yeah, right. How about a year or two of intensive therapy and a few lectures about being a law-abiding adult instead? This episode is much too cut-and-dry and simplistic to be either entertaining or realistic.

The Verdict: C

New Drama Targets the Dark Side

Tonight, Law & Order alum Benjamin Bratt will return to the tube on The Cleaner, the first new original series from basic cable’s A&E in six years. Was the wait worth it?

Benjamin Bratt’s New Gig Is Coming

On July 15, A&E Network will launch The Cleaner, its first original scripted drama series in more than six years, starring Benjamin Bratt (Law & Order, Miss Congeniality), Amy Price-Francis (Californication), Grace Park (Battlestar Galactica), Kevin Michael Richardson (Knights of Prosperity), Esteban Powell (Dazed and Confused), Brett DelBuono (Kidnapped), and Liliana Mumy (Cheaper by the Dozen).