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With the major exception of The Good Wife (CBS), there’s really not much that piques my interest on network television these days. Indeed, it increasingly seems as if everything and everyone with any originality or daring has migrated to cable. But, that being said, there is one new network show that, I must confess, has me a little excited: Don’t Trust the B— in Apt. 23 (ABC, trailer), which debuts tonight at 9:30, right after Modern Family.

Why? In part because of the unusual title; in part because it has been endlessly promoted on ABC, ABC’s affiliated channels (ESPN, etc.), and in movie theater promos; and in part because it is attempting the tongue-in-cheek feat of having James Van Der Beek, the forgotten Dawson’s Creek (WB) alum (as in not Katie Holmes, Michelle Williams, or Joshua Jackson), portray — you guessed it — James Van Der Beek.

But the show’s biggest draw for me, far and away, is the fact that it stars Krysten Ritter, the 30-year-old actress who I first noticed during season two of Breaking Bad (AMC), on which she portrayed Jane, the moody, drug-addicted, and — spoiler alert — ill-fated girlfriend of Jesse (Aaron Paul). In Apt. 23, as the show is destined to be called in PG-13 America, Ritter plays a city girl who repeatedly cons and crosses her naive new roommate (Dreama Walker, who played Becca, Alan Cumming’s young nemesis, on The Good Wife). Ritter has described her character as “Holly Golightly and the devil combined.”

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Last Thursday, I had the pleasure of spending about 45-minutes on the telephone with Michelle Williams, who is not only one of America’s finest actresses — and, at 30, will probably remain one of them for decades to come — but who is also a deeply intelligent woman; a devoted single mother; and a real survivor. (She’s also not bad on the eyes!)

Williams became a star at the tender age of 17 on the hit TV show “Dawson’s Creek” (1998-2003) — I remember when it happened because I’m about the same age as her and often tuned in. She proved that she had the acting chops to match her looks in a number of early films, but especially “Brokeback Mountain” (2005), for which she received a best supporting actress Oscar nod. She attracted the interest of the tabloids when she first began dating her “Brokeback” co-star Heath Ledger, with whom she would eventually have a daughter, Matilda — and again in early 2008, when Ledger died suddenly. After a period of mourning and seclusion, Williams reemerged in a series of roles that brought her widespread acclaim — from the bare-bones indie “Wendy and Lucy” (2008) to the eccentric ensemble piece “Synecdoche, New York” (2008) to the Martin Scorsese-mystery “Shutter Island” (2010) — and, before long, she’ll be seen portraying another movie star who died far too young, Marilyn Monroe, in a biopic entitled “My Week with Marilyn.” Things have never looked better for her in terms of her career, but she’s not ruling out the possibility that she might wake up one day, decide that she’s had enough of it all, and call it quits. There’s more to life than being a movie star, she has learned.

Over the course of our conversation — a full transcript of which follows — Williams and I discussed virtually all of the above. We focused particularly, however, on the pinnacle achievement of her career up to this point: her remarkable performance in Derek Cianfrance’s “Blue Valentine” (The Weinstein Company, 12/31, NC-17, trailer), a gritty, honest, adult drama about the complexities of a relationship. (To me, at least, it’s somewhat reminiscent of a play and film that preceded it by half a century, “A Streetcar Named Desire.”) To play the part of a woman who falls in — and, six years later, out of — love with the same man (Ryan Gosling), a lot was asked of Williams — extensive emotional and physical nakedness, a quick weight gain, and even some tap-dancing — and, as anyone who has seen the film can attest, she certainly rose to the occasion.

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