By JOANNE WEINTRAUB of the Journal Sentinel staff

There are only so many ways you can spin a law-and-order drama, and "Law & Order" alone has already spun three of them -- make that four, come September -- in a fairly conventional direction.

So you have to give the creators of "The Jury" credit for trying something different. As the title of this courtroom drama makes plain, the victim and the accused, the prosecution and the defense all take a back seat to the 12 men and women who decide each criminal case.

There have been dramas set in jury rooms before, most notably "12 Angry Men," first filmed in 1957 and remade by Showtime 40 years later. But empanelling a single jury is one thing. Filling those chairs every week is something else again.

Are we going to want to meet 12 strangers each week? Are the writers going to run out of juror-to-juror pleasantries, arguments, complaints and pick-up lines? Is the casting director going to run out of actors?

Based on the first two episodes, which will air back-to-back Tuesday (with a repeat of the first episode only on Friday), "The Jury" just may be able to rise to those challenges.

If it stayed sequestered in the jury room, it would be suffocating. But creators Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana, who also collaborated on the great "Homicide: Life on the Street," are too smart to let that happen.

Instead, they periodically visit the courtroom to show us the trial from another perspective. Even better -- shamelessly stealing a technique used masterfully in "Without a Trace" -- they also cut away to brief, almost dreamlike scenes of the alleged crime, including a final segment that lets us know whether the jury's verdict was just.

Knowing that the truth is out there -- and that, unlike the jury, we'll get to glimpse it -- gives the jurors' deliberations a provocative edge. The more persuasive, polished or pushy among them may prevail, but justice may not.

The only regulars in the cast are the lawyers (Anna Friel, Shalom Harlow, Billy Burke, Jeff Hephner), who at this point are hard to tell apart, and a few other officers of the court, including the presiding judge, played by none other than Levinson himself. The Oscar-winning director ("Rain Man") makes a surprisingly believable jurist, delivering his lines with just the right mixture of rectitude and crankiness.

As for the jurors, their asides and digressions are often more convincing than their attempts to face the issues head-on, some of which verge on the trite or stereotypical.

But "The Jury" is definitely worth a look. Give Fox credit, too, for this early launch of a show with more on its mind than -- well, than whatever's on the minds of Paris and Nicole.