Ellen Gray: Winnie Holzman, creator of 'My So-Called Life,' delivers new show, and it's 'Huge'

HUGE. 9 tonight, ABC Family.

I'VE WAITED A long time to see Winnie Holzman, the creator of "My So-Called Life" and the Tony-nominated writer of Broadway's "Wicked," do another show about adolescent girls.

Now she has. And happily, it's "Huge."

Developed by Holzman, who's always worn her inner teen on her sleeve, and her daughter, Savannah Dooley, and based on a young-adult novel by Sasha Paley about kids at a weight-loss camp, "Huge" is the latest addition to ABC Family's collection of shows targeted to tween and teen girls.

Based on the two episodes I've seen so far, it's also one of the best, full of believable characters who may have both more and less to hide than those girls on "Pretty Little Liars" but at least won't be required to do it while wearing bikinis.

At least not after the initial weigh-in.

It doesn't hurt that in a medium lately obsessed with turning weight loss into entertainment, "Huge" suggests the problem's a bit more complicated than NBC's "The Biggest Loser" might lead you to believe.

After all, Becca (Raven Goodwin), the shy girl who lost 26 pounds the summer before, only to gain it all back over the fall, winter and spring, isn't the only recidivist at Camp Victory, whose no-nonsense director, Dr. Rand (Gina Torres), might have a few issues of her own.

Nikki Blonsky ("Hairspray") stars as Wil - short for Wilhelmina - who's decided that the best way to get back at her parents for shipping her off to fat camp is to see if she can spend the summer gaining weight, while the model-pretty Amber (played by David Hasselhoff's model/actress daughter Hayley Hasselhoff) is desperate to achieve a perfect body - but intrigued to discover that in a camp full of less-than-perfect ones, hers is already considered pretty close.

What quickly becomes clear in "Huge" is that though a place like Camp Victory might, as one character notes, level the playing field, hierarchies tend to spring up independent of body type.

In other words, you don't have to be thin to be popular or an outcast, a geek or a jock.