Viewers connect with mysteries of ‘MediumSSRq

By MATEA GOLD

NEW YORK — Patricia Arquette has gotten accustomed to the comments from fans who don’t seem to know that she’s still on television.

“I definitely have people every day grab me on the street saying, ‘When is your show coming back, why did they cancel it?’ ” said Arquette, who stars in “Medium,” NBC’s drama about a psychic who helps solve crimes while juggling the quotidian challenges of middle-class family life.

In fact, “Medium” returned to the air this month for its fifth season, which finds Arquette’s character, Allison DuBois, back assisting the Phoenix district attorney’s office, the fallout from her public exposure now largely subsided. The return of the series wasn’t accompanied by the fanfare of other mid-season premieres such as “American Idol” or “Lost.” But the under-the-radar drama continues to draw a loyal fan base that gravitates to the program’s cleverly packed mysteries and unsentimental depiction of a marriage.

In its first three episodes this year, “Medium” averaged 8.5 million viewers, making it NBC’s sixth-most-watched scripted series of the season. The show has attracted 45 percent more viewers than NBC’s earlier 10 p.m. (ET/PT) Monday programming, which included “My Own Worst Enemy” and “Momma’s Boys.”

It’s a solid performance for a drama that does not get a huge marketing boost or generate much chatter in the zeitgeist.

“I’m just grateful that we have a really dedicated, smart audience that’s really connected to the show,” Arquette said. “It’s really kind of been the little engine that could.”

Executive producer Glenn Gordon Caron (“Moonlighting”) — who created the show based on the life of a real medium named Allison DuBois — is not sure of the reasons for the series’ following. But he thinks viewers may be picking up on his “maniacal” passion for the program.

“My ego wants to think that in some way, people feel that and respond to that and go, ‘OK, this is a show that people genuinely care deeply about,”’ he said. “I think they sense that you’re really trying to earn the 60 minutes that they give you.”

At its heart, “Medium” is not just a crime procedural but an intimate look at marriage and family dynamics, a rarity on network television. Much of the narrative centers on the relationship between Allison and her husband, Joe (Jake Weber), a matter-of-fact scientist who struggles to understand his wife’s supernatural powers. In between interpreting Allison’s dark dreams, they quarrel over mundane household responsibilities and parent three precocious daughters.

When he first pitched the show to NBC, Caron told the network that that relationship fascinated him even more than Allison’s powers. But it took some convincing before executives signed on to his approach.

“The show was born in that moment when procedurals like ‘CSI’ and ‘Law & Order’ were extraordinarily successful,” he said. “They were largely about clue-to-clue, and I couldn’t have cared less about that. So there was a lot of conversation about, ‘Do we really need this family stuff?’ And I said, ‘Guys, that’s the only reason I’m here. The only thing that’s intriguing to me is there’s this woman who genuinely believes she sees this stuff and she’s married to a guy who’s a scientist, whose life is based on the physical facts of the world. I’m dying to figure out, what do they talk about at night?”’