John Sayles wrote "Shannon's Deal" (Sunday at 9 p.m., Channels 4, 36 and 39), a pilot that didn't make the cut for next fall. As might be expected from the creator of such offbeat films as "Return of the Secaucus Seven," "The Brother From Another Planet" and "Eight Men Out," it's a fairly rich script for its genre.
That genre is lawyer show, scrappy loner subdivision. Here we have a guy (Jamey Sheridan) who, fed up with corporate law and wracked by gambling debts and a failed marriage, puts out his own shingle--in a fleabag building occupied by ambulance chasers. Shannon is no chaser--of ambulances or anything else. He appears willing to sit in his office and theorize about poker. But desperate women, anxious about their imprisoned boyfriends, come to him--and he becomes entangled in their cases.
