Every June, the TV world seems to transform.

Cable networks get bigger, characters get quirkier, women get tougher.

Mary McCormack can vouch for that. In cable's new "In Plain Sight," she's a U.S. marshal who is great at her work and shabby at everything else.

Hollywood shows lots of guys like that. "They get to break the rules," she said.

And women? "They always have to be the moral center of the piece and sort of know right and wrong."

Not women in summertime cable. There's Holly Hunter in "Saving Grace," Glenn Close in "Damages," Kyra Sedgwick in "The Closer" and more. Each plays a tough woman whose personal life is in shambles.

Now McCormack is Mary Shannon, who has a job as U.S. marshal, working on the witness protection program.

Her partner (Frederick Weller) has talent, hidden beneath a fool's facade.

Her personal life is complicated. She has a steamy, sweaty and quite impersonal relationship with her lover, played by Cristian de la Fuente of "Dancing With the Stars" fame. And her family saps her money. Her mom (Lesley Ann Warren) and sister (Nichole Hiltz) are both long-term, uninvited guests.

All of this happens in Albuquerque, N.M., which provides a fresh location.

"It has its own unique quirkiness that seems to fit with what this show is," said David Maples, the show's creator. "It's got really different architecture."

And it has expanse. "It's going to give us a really interesting, blue-sky sort of wide-open-space look," Maples said.

Plopped into this serene setting is an outsider. Shannon is from New Jersey, with an assertiveness to match.

"I'm from New Jersey, and I wanted that kind of attitude," McCormack said. "She's not a sentimental person."

McCormack grew up in Plainfield, where her dad was a car dealer. At 12, she starred (playing a boy) in "Amahl and the Night Visitors." Then came more community theater, plus college and, quite quickly, New York City.

"It was so much fun," she said. "When you're 19, you think you can do anything."

She would eventually reach Broadway twice. In 1999, she temporarily took the starring role in the "Cabaret" revival; currently she's had some raves in the comedy "Boeing-Boeing."

Those, however, would come after her TV success, usually in brainy roles. McCormack was a lawyer in Steven Bochco's "Murder One," a politico in "K-Street," deputy national security adviser in "The West Wing."

Now cable offers a different mood. "It just seems like it's time for a great, (kick-butt) heroine for television," said Paul Stupin, one of the "In Plain Sight" producers.

McCormack likes the notion. "I can't wait to beat a bunch of people up," she said.

Well, beating-up is a little more strenuous under the New Mexico sun. "The first day we shot, it was 7 in the morning and it was already 90 degrees."

That soon became complicated because she was pregnant. Her second daughter was born in May 2007 and filming resumed on this 13-hour first season.

In many ways, McCormack said, Albuquerque was a perfect place for her daughters.

"There's a great art scene and an amazing zoo — if I ever had a chance to get to it," she said. "I worked so much that I didn't have time."

That's the flip side of being in this cable world.

In traditional TV, the women say reasonable things, then are gone while the men fall apart. In summertime cable, the women have to do it all.