By Kelly Rausch

In a parish under siege, there’s one man who’s out for justice. And that man is Steven Seagal: Lawman.

The opening credits of A&E’s new half-hour reality show “Steven Seagal: Lawman” tell us Seagal has been a sheriff’s deputy for the past 20 years, “a job he’s kept out of the limelight … until now.” He’s kept it out of the limelight? I was under the impression it was the limelight that was willfully ignoring this tidbit all this time. We’re talking about an actor whose latest acting roles include a string of direct to video fare with titles like “Pistol Whipped” and “Today You Die.”

“Lawman” is like “Cops” but with slightly better production values and an over-the-hill, once-upon-a-time moderately well-known action star as the lead every episode. Seagal is still a big man. The passage of time has rendered his hair into a dyed black Brillo pad shaped to a sharp widow’s peak, and he sports the tell-tale reading glasses of middle age.

To Seagal, there is nothing funny or fake about upholding the law and protecting the good people of Jefferson Parish, La. His eyes are constantly scanning the streets he patrols, observing, anticipating criminal activity. Watch as Steven accurately predicts when a suspect is going to run. Watch as Seagal, just one of multiple officers on the scene, finds “contraband” discarded by said fleeing suspect lying on the ground (a small amount of marijuana in plain view). Watch him tensely eye a crowd of local ner-do-wells. This is one man who’s hard to kill even if he is marked for death on deadly ground.

“Those who have studied martial arts as long as I have, we can usually see those kinds of predators,” Seagal tells us. He has a gift. An intuition. A sixth sense. An unrealistic sense of himself? This may be Seagal’s best character ever.

Seagal is very serious about this. He fancies himself part zen master part defender of the weak. He counsels fellow deputies on proper shooting technique and offers Aikido clinics for members of his team ostensibly to help his colleagues protect themselves. It’s also conveniently useful for showing off a bit of what made him moderately recognizable 20 years ago. All joking aside, Seagal is one heck of a marksman and a darn good gravel-voiced narrator.

Seagal offers such pearls of wisdom as “If you can’t anticipate an attack, you can’t defend against it,” and “Anybody can die any time, any place.” Was is Confucious or Steven Seagal who said, “Tase him! Tase him! Tase him!” as a perp was taken down to the ground by officers?

“This gentleman is not a very good Zen practitioner,” he notes of one particularly unruly arrestee. The limits of Seagal’s own Zen are clearly stretched as he aggressively gets out of his SUV, slamming the door with emphasis at the man’s refusal to be Zen-like and sit quietly in the back of a squad car. “It goes to show you it can be very dangerous out on these streets. You’ve got to really stay on your toes,” he tells the camera after the handcuffed man kicks out the car’s back window.

Well-timed commercial breaks and a tension-ratcheting score give the scenes greater anxiety than they probably deserve. When Seagal questions some young men for what might be an open container violation, they find a gun in one man’s pocket.

After an intense exchange, it’s determined the men hadn’t been drinking and the gun is properly registered. But Seagal wants us to know that it could have gone differently. “The gun could have been pointed at us. You just never know.”

Find out if the gun ever does get pointed at Seagal each Wednesday at 9 p.m. on A&E.