The commercial-free premiere of TNT's new heist drama, Leverage, scored a hefty five million viewers last night. It didn't touch The Closer's insanely high numbers, but it'll do.

Leverage delivered TNT's best ratings for the 18-49 demo for an original series aired during a regular broadcast season. That means we'll probably see a lot more of Timothy Hutton and crew gracing our tubes in 2009. Fans of good TV everywhere should be celebrating.

I mostly tuned into Leverage to see Christian Kane, who I loved as the scheming Lindsey McDonald on Joss Whedon's Angel. Kane plays Eliot Spencer on Leverage, a dude who could make Jason Bourne cry "uncle!" with his amazing hand-to-hand combat skills. Kane was only one of the things I liked about this show. The entire cast was great, especially Hutton, and the whole A-Team meets Ocean's 11 thing really worked for me.

The show's breezy tone really fits the premise: A jilted good guy leads a team of crack criminals to right the wrongs done by greedy corporations. Still, I was hoping Leverage would be a bit darker. I'm a huge fan of Hutton's Oscar-winning turn in Ordinary People. A few early reviews of the show led me to believe that he'd be revisiting some of that film's weighty themes here. That really wasn't the case, but Leverage won me over from the start anyway. The pacing was great, the dialogue was fast and funny, and there was enough suspense to keep me glued to the set. I'm glad to see that 5 million other people also decided to give it a try.

The show's lead-in, the TNT original movie The Librarian: Curse of The Judas Chalice, also did well with 5.4 million viewers. Leverage moves to its regular timeslot, Tuesdays at 10 p.m. (Eastern), this week.