'The Mentalist' and Simon Baker find a hit

Simon Baker is having a rough time. He's battling a stubborn cold, and the pressures of a long shooting day on the Warner Bros. lot are taking their toll. But Baker, the star of CBS' "The Mentalist," still has a smile and twinkle in his eyes. That's how it is when you're the face of the season's only breakout hit at a time when few believed it possible for a major network to deliver a sizable weekly audience for a new scripted program.

"Everything is good right now, really good," said Baker, apologizing for his cough and the rasp in his voice. "Every TV show is a crapshoot, really. But every once in a while, a show gets anointed as 'the show.' And at the moment, we are it."

Even up against Fox's formidable "American Idol," which has earned the nickname "Death Star" for obliterating the competition, "The Mentalist" has emerged as the most popular -- and most unlikely -- hit of the network TV season.

An aggressively unhip show with no built-in "water cooler" factor, "The Mentalist" might try the patience of the most seasoned psychic as to why it has triumphed over more edgy, star-driven fare. The success of the drama, which follows in the tradition of "The Rockford Files," "Magnum P.I." and "Columbo," where the quirky main character solves crimes with ingenuity and more than a little humor, might come down to the adage that everything old is new again.

Not only has it outdistanced its more high-profile newcomer competition such as Fox's "Fringe," the CW's "90210" and NBC's "My Own Worst Enemy," the Tuesday night show has accomplished the rarest of feats: being a breakout scripted hit on network TV that started strong out of the gate. Only "Desperate Housewives," "Lost" and the fading "Heroes" have displayed similar momentum in the last several years.

The show, in which the native Australian plays a onetime psychic turned crime investigator, regularly lands in the top 10 of the week's most-watched shows. Its first-run episodes average almost 19 million viewers per week, while even repeats bring in more than 14 million, according to Nielsen.

"This show has clearly landed above the fray of other new entries," said Jason Mittell, an associate professor of film and media culture at Middlebury College in Vermont. "It has succeeded mostly on the backs of other CBS procedurals that are popular with older viewers. It's less about innovation than the repetition of the formula -- with a difference."