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Tom Selleck as Jesse Stone
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Tom Selleck is back for the fifth installment of the Jesse Stone TV movie series

CHRIS REARDON / CBS

Tom Selleck is back for the fifth installment of the Jesse Stone TV movie series

At one point in his lengthy television career, Tom Selleck came to be identified with a bright red Hawaiian shirt, the type he wore in his role as a smart-alecky private eye in the long-running 1980s series Magnum, P.I.

These days, the 64-year-old actor is more like an old pair of jeans - frayed a little at the cuffs and worn thin at the knees, but still the most comfortable item of clothing in the closet. Never is that more apparent than in his role as Jesse Stone, the small-town lawman at the center of a popular series of TV movies that have been running on CBS over the last few years.

On Sunday night, Selleck is back again as the laconic police chief of Paradise, Mass., the tiny seaside town where he wound up after losing his wife and his job as an L.A. homicide detective because of his drinking problems. Jesse Stone: Thin Ice is the fifth installment in the series, which is based on the best-selling novels by crime writer Robert B. Parker. The two-hour movie airs at 9 p.m. on WTOL-TV, Channel 11, in Toledo.

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As always, Selleck plays Chief Stone as a lonely, brooding sort, a man of few words but a guy with stoic strength and an unbending moral code. The chief routinely disappears for long periods of time, and when he finally turns up and people ask where he's been, his standard reply is a terse non-answer: "Fighting crime."

Once again, he's ably supported by the other members of his small but stalwart police department: Rose Gammon (Kathy Baker, formerly of Picket Fences) and Luther "Suitcase" Simpson (Kohl Sudduth). This time around, he's under more pressure than usual from the stiff-necked members of the town council, who wish he'd stop uncovering crimes in their peaceful little hamlet because the publicity isn't too good for tourism.

"We think you police this town like a cowboy sheriff in a bad movie," sneers one councilman during a contentious meeting. "I think you're making up your own rules."

"Like Little Bill Daggett," Jesse replies quietly.

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"Excuse me?"

"Gene Hackman in Unforgiven," Jesse explains helpfully, then adds with a straight face, "I would prefer that you think of me as a benevolent Gene Hackman."

Unlike previous installments of the series, much of the action in Thin Ice takes place not in Paradise but in nearby Boston, where Jesse gets caught in a shootout while he's there visiting his old pal, State Homicide Commander Healy (Stephen McHattie). Healy is nearly killed, and Jesse himself is wounded, and from that point on, the story follows his dogged efforts to track down the shooter and bring him to justice.

Along the way, the stubborn cop mixes it up with Boston mobsters, has an unlikely romance with a cute female investigator with the very unlikely name of Sidney Greenstreet, and encounters a desperate woman who believes that her kidnapped son is somewhere in Paradise.

But the plot is really secondary, and that's a good thing, because it happens to be pretty thin. If you're a Tom Selleck fan, however, it's probably satisfying enough just to watch him gaze out to sea and wrestle with his private demons, seldom without a cup of coffee or a glass of scotch in his hand. Unlike most TV movies, Jesse Stone stories allow things to develop at their own pace, and if that sometimes takes a while, well, that's the way it goes in a place like Paradise.

As a rule, TV movies don't fare so well in the ratings, but the Jesse Stone franchise on CBS has been an exception. The four installments that have aired to date have averaged more than 15 million viewers, and the last one, which was up against the season finale of the popular ABC series Dancing with the Stars, still managed to capture more than 13 million viewers.

The network has enough confidence in the franchise that the sixth episode, titled Jesse Stone: No Remorse, is currently wrapping up shooting in Nova Scotia.

Thin Ice happens to be one of the weaker entries in the Jesse Stone series, but it still manages to be a cut above the average "disease of the week" or "ripped from the headlines" TV movie. And that's mainly because of Selleck. He's still ruggedly handsome, he brings a real presence to the screen, and he seems more than comfortable in his role.

Almost like he's wearing a favorite pair of old jeans.

First Published February 27, 2009, 12:40 p.m.

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Tom Selleck as Jesse Stone  (CHRIS REARDON / CBS)
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