There are really two things you need to know out of the gate about TNT’s intriguing Good Behavior, which debuts November 15 with a two-hour premiere.

First of all, as I make clear in my video review above, full points to Michelle Dockery for being the first of the cast of Julian Fellowes’ Downton Abbey to show there really is small-screen life after being a part of the soapy Crawley family saga. Secondly, the Dockery-led self-destructive grifter series based on the Letty Dobesh books by Blake Crouch starts out as solid TV and then shifts into something far better with deft crafting.

I recommend you check out the first two episodes as they set up the dark tale of Dockery’s just-out-of-prison Letty. With addiction and sometimes harrowing family issues at the fore and a parole officer who is running out of patience and excuses, an easy scam goes wrong for Letty and she finds herself suddenly looking for a moral center and a way out of becoming the potentially dead sidekick to a hitman. After that is all set up, Good Behavior puts pedal to metal and heads off in absorbing directions you’ll want to watch.

No spoilers here, but by it’s third episode the Carolinas-based show begins to shed convention and turns from standard cable fare to a slice of a much more interesting segment of Americana and the people who live in it. Amidst the post-modern noir dialogue, twisting roads, truck stops, big con quips, sticky fingers and some very well-placed motivational apps, that where’s Dockery and Juan Diego Botto, who plays hitman Javier, show their serious chops.

By setting the table so conventionally, Good Behavior — which reunites Wayward Pines Season 1 collaborators Crouch and showrunner Chad Hodge as executive producers — manages to slyly raise the grade of the show and its narrative with payoffs that are more than up to snuff.

Click on my video review above of Good Behavior to hear more of what I think of the TNT drama. And tell us will you be on your best behavior and tuning in on the 15th?