If there really were some “how to” on creating an entertaining TV show, more people would use it.

Still, you could do worse than following the path blazed by Pete Nowalk, creator of the wild and wildly entertaining How To Get Away with Murder (ABC, Thursday, 10 ET/PT; *** out of four). And the first step is to hire a terrific actor to star — though good luck finding one as good as Viola Davis. Bringing every ounce of her considerable talent to bear in Wednesday’s opener, Davis convincingly makes criminal lawyer/law professor Annalise Keating tough, smart, vibrant, sexy, anguished, ambitious, conniving, mature, immature and somehow, underneath it all, admirable.

You then find a reliably sturdy TV premise for her to carry: dropping her into the middle of a murder mystery, giving her a case-of-the-week to battle, and surrounding her with an attractive supporting cast. Oh, and if you want to actually get the show on the air, create it for Shonda Rhimes’ production company, and then watch as it joins Rhimes’ own creations, Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal, to fill ABC’s Thursday night.

If you’re wondering where Murder falls on the Shondaland scale, it’s somewhere in the middle: a bit crazier than Grey’s, but not as certifiably nuts as Scandal. The shows share a similar fondness for grand dramatic gestures and, thank goodness, diverse casting — but that’s pretty much where the resemblance ends. They are no more the same series simply because they come from Rhimes’ production company than are, say, Mom, The Big Bang Theory and Mike & Molly just because they come from Chuck Lorre’s.

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SOURCE: USA Today – Robert Bianco