Who would have thought that the most ambitious, most compelling new drama of the season would suddenly drop out of the sky in the midst of the holidays, usually a dead zone for network TV?

But that’s the case with “Line of Fire” (10 p.m. Tuesday, ABC), an FBI-mob drama that talks tough, plays it street-smart and revels in its moral ambiguity. The good guys aren’t always good; the bad guys aren’t demonized; innocent victims aren’t necessarily that innocent. In the three episodes made available for review, “Line of Fire” looks as if it wandered onto network TV from the cable world where “The Sopranos,” “The Shield” and “The Wire” thrive.

Well, OK, it’s not as good as those shows – yet. For one thing, it needs a jolt of humor very badly. But as gritty, tough-minded and often suspenseful entertainment, “Line of Fire” ranks right up there with the late, lamented “Boomtown” in high-quality storytelling.

At the heart of the series, which will run for 13 weeks as a midseason replacement for “NYPD Blue,” is an ongoing war between the FBI and a Richmond, Va., crime family. (To what I’m sure is the delight of the Richmond Chamber of Commerce, the Virginia city comes off as about as appealing as the Baltimore of “The Wire.”) The two sides aren’t always at each other’s throats, but creator Rod Lurie and his writers do an artful job of finding parallel story threads in the lives of both the feds and the wise guys.

Although Leslie Bibb gets top billing as an earnest young agent driven by the loss of her husband on Sept. 11, 2001, two other members of the sizable ensemble dominate the show. On one side is crime boss Jonah Malloy, who – as played by veteran character actor David Paymer – is a very scary, yet surprisingly sympathetic, guy. On the other is Lisa Cohen, the ambitious head of the local FBI office. Cohen is played with steely determination by Leslie Hope, who was so memorable as Teri Bauer in the first season of “24” and proves just as compelling here.

“Line of Fire” doesn’t face an easy task in terms of finding an audience.

First, it is complex with no easy resolutions at the end of each hour. Selling that to the viewing public has proven awfully hard in recent seasons. Second, the series will be going head-to-head with both “Judging Amy” and the “Special Victims Unit.”

Here’s hoping that ABC shows some patience, giving this potentially terrific drama a chance to find its audience.

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-I have to admit that I’m a bit ambivalent about “The Tracy Morgan Show,” the new NBC comedy that makes its debut this week (8 p.m. Tuesday). There are some things to like about it, including Tracy Morgan (“Saturday Night Live”) himself, its working-class setting and a certain realistic family warmth. On the flip side: The writing is erratic, and the youngest son in this household, 7-year-old Jimmy (Bobb’e J. Thompson), is precocious to the point of being creepy. I think a few more episodes are needed to make a final judgment.

-Somehow poker has become the hot new thing on TV with ESPN and the Travel Channel, among other channels, drawing surprisingly big audiences to watch people play cards.

The latest show in the genre: “Celebrity Poker Showdown,” a six-week series that makes its debut this week (9 p.m. Tuesday, Bravo). In this case, the players are celebrities tackling No Limit Texas Hold’em for charity. (Texas Hold’em is the preferred seven-card game at poker championships.)

The fact that Ben Affleck, Don Cheadle, Martin Sheen, Allison Janney and others aren’t using their own money drains some of the tension out of the games. But most have clearly played poker before and are fiercely competitive. A few play well enough that they wouldn’t be out of place at a high-stakes table in Vegas.

It all makes for surprisingly engrossing television, even if you’ve never drawn to an inside straight.

-I’m going to jump the gun a little bit on “Angels in America,” the Mike Nichols-directed film version of Tony Kushner’s epic play that airs this Sunday on HBO. This two-part made-for-TV movie is so good – perhaps the best thing that American television has ever done – that it might actually be worth subscribing to HBO if you don’t already. Certainly, it’s worth checking around to see if you can have an HBO subscriber tape it for you. Full coverage of “Angels” will appear in Sunday’s Arts & Entertainment section, but I can say now that this is something you should not miss.

-“Ed” will be moving to 9 p.m. Friday in mid-January after opening the season on Wednesdays. Replacing the charming but under-watched “Miss Match,” “Ed” will air all new episodes in January and February – and then disappear for the rest of the season. “Miss Match” will return in March with new episodes and presumably finish out the year in that time period. The news is not good for fans of either series, since both will have shortened seasons in this arrangement.

-And finally, Fox is showing some serious patience with a couple of its ratings-deprived new series. First, it signed up the very funny “Arrested Development,” which isn’t doing big business on Sundays, for a full season. Then it ordered a full season of “Tru Calling,” which is struggling on Thursdays.

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(c) 2003, San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.).

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AP-NY-12-01-03 1010EST