Now here’s an optimistic premise: ABC’s new Conviction suggests that out of a gurgling swamp of political intrigue and double-dealing, something good could bubble to the surface.

Conviction, which premieres Monday at 10 p.m. ET, brings back Hayley Atwell (top) as Hayes Morrison, a sharp lawyer and former First Daughter who is brought in to head New York’s newly formed Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU), which looks into cases where an innocent person may have been sent to jail.

Almost everyone agrees that’s noble work, given our familiarity with real-life cases where this has happened. So it seems like a natural setup for a procedural drama that could slip into the timeslot vacated by Castle.

But ABC isn’t naïve enough to think that just deconstructing the ways in which possibly innocent people were convicted is likely to draw a winning audience every week.

So Hayes gets her own backstory that’s at least as complicated as the ones that the men and women in orange jumpsuits are so eager to tell.

For starters, she doesn’t want the job. But that backstory won’t let her just say no.

She’s being recruited by one Conner Wallace (Eddie Cahill (right), a sleazy District Attorney who created the CIU to restore some of his tattered image.

Hayes is perfect for the gig, of course, because that former First Daughter thing will make the whole project just reek of integrity.

Integrity, not surprisingly, isn’t a priority for Wallace. He wants good press without making it look like his office, which put many of these convicted people away, was incompetent.

Hayes knows this. She also knows that Wallace has information on her – information involving an unfortunate indiscretion, public information about which has been carefully covered up.

We won’t go into full spoilers here, but it’s relevant that Hayes’s mother Harper (Bess Armstrong) is running for the U.S. Senate. So Hayes has an incentive not only to protect herself, but also to protect Mom, even though Mom isn’t the cuddliest TV mother ever.

So Hayes gets blackmailed into taking the gig, and she responds the way most children would respond to being forced to eat their broccoli. She pouts.

She shows up for work, but she isn’t really there, which is disappointing both to the client who is finally getting his one shot at redemption and to her team.

The team, which is taking this CIU thing seriously, will presumably become the requisite disparate family that all TV dramas need. It includes paralegal Tess Thompson (Emily Kinney), former detective Maxine Bohen (Merrin Dungey) and forensic guy Frankie Cruz (Manny Montana).

Oh, and did we mention Sam Spencer (Shawn Ashmore, left), another ambitious lawyer who had been thinking he would be the one chosen to run CIU?

Nothing like having the guy who wanted your job become a key member of your team.

But that’s how it is because, among other things, Wallace doesn’t let Hayes pick the team herself. She gets what he gives her.

Fresh off two seasons as Agent Carter, Atwell will be a familiar face to ABC viewers. Her attitude’s just a little more jaded.

Conviction is a kind of television hybrid, not completely unlike Castle.

It’s got the CBS procedural DNA, where most weeks a case will be laid out and solved within the hour. At the same time it doesn’t abandon ABC’s love of high-stakes soap opera.

Let’s assume a romantic candidate will show up at some point, someone other than Wallace, to round out the package. Until then, despite all that backstory, the procedural part will have to hold much of the fort.