"Rizzoli & Isles," though it sounds like the name of a personal-injury law practice, is actually the title of a new police procedural on TNT (beginning Monday) that is kind of like a "Cagney & Lacey" for the post-feminist, post-personal-trainer age. Set in Boston and based on characters created by the novelist Tess Gerritsen, the show centers on the professional and personal relationship of two women: Jane Rizzoli, the only female detective in the homicide division; and Maura Isles, a medical examiner who walks mincingly around her crime scenes in heels, apparently undeterred by the fear of blood stains on expensive leather.

Do these women make an unlikely pair? You bet. Rizzoli, to the dismay of her mother, is a tomboy in pantsuits who can't figure out men or lipstick and can't much be bothered. Does she wear Red Sox jerseys? Can she out-man the guys at the precinct? Does she like to shoot hoops? Well, that's like asking if mustard goes on a hot dog. Isles, the kind of woman who most likely spends all her non-forensic time searching for Hermes bags on eBay, thinks Rizzoli has a fashion problem. In the absence of an arcing narrative, the series wants us to accept as its mission of suspense the mystery of this crypto drag-king-meets-shopaholic friendship.

Rizzoli, as it happens, is played by Angie Harmon, a model turned actress. (The role of Isles is Sasha Alexander's.) To tag her character with a style problem is like complaining that LeBron James bakes only a mediocre layer cake.

One of the stranger aspects of "Rizzoli & Isles" is the extent to which it ignores Harmon's striking beauty; one suspects that the casting people presumed that, by virtue of her husky voice, she is the kind of person we'd think just likes to hang back and coach Little League. Harmon experienced something of a similar fate when she played a prosecutor on "Law & Order," but the denial was significantly less jarring in the context of a series that almost categorically refused to recognize the existence of a personal life. Here we are asked to put on our fantasy goggles and imagine that she is unaccustomed to engaging men beyond "looks like they used a Smith & Wesson 340PD" shoptalk.

The only guy around who seems to notice what a looker Rizzoli really is goes by the name Hoyt and has on his resume a long list of home invasions, rapes and killings. He held Rizzoli captive a while back before he landed in prison, but in the premiere episode he is out to replay their last encounter.

This is a series, ultimately, that is out to scam us, trying to have us believe that the sexism Rizzoli experiences comes at the hands of lug-headed male colleagues who tell her to take some Midol when she is stressed out. The real perpetrator, of course, is a show whose creepy gender politics imply that women, no matter how tough, always need rescuing, and that beauty, in the end, only gets you the most dangerous kind of attention.