Talk about timely: The very first question Oscar-winning actor Timothy Hutton fielded in today’s telephone press conference to promote the second season premiere on July 15 of his hit TNT show “Leverage” was about whether the cons-avenging-the-weak-against-the-Man premise was bound to be even more popular in this post-Bernie Madoff/automaker bailout America.

“I think there might be an element of that,” said the actor, who once again plays Nathan Ford, a former insurance investigator who is driven to take the side of victims of the system after his company refuses to pay for an experimental treatment for his sick son, who later dies.

“That’s always the case with the hustler taking down the hustler, taking down the con artist,” Hutton continued, adding that one of this year’s scumbag CEO’s is – surprise! – a Madoff type on house arrest. “That’s a theme that people identify with, that resonates now.”

When last season ended, Ford had parted ways with his team of grifters-with-a-heart: Mistress of disguises/ex-girlfriend Sophie (Gina Bellman), Hardison (Aldis Hodge), anti-social thief Parker (Beth Riesgraf) and wily enforcer Eliot (Christian Kane), sending them all on their wealthy way to rejoin a life a crime . But in Episode 1 of this season, the team has tracked Nathan down and is pressuring him back into the Robin Hood game, whether he wants to or not. This has a profound effect on his newly-found sobriety, as well as his life.

“I think (Nathan)’s having a hard time getting back with the team, because he’s not sure that’s a road he wants to go down again,” Hutton says. “He’s moved back to Boston, stopped drinking and feels that he has tied up a lot of loose ends. (But the team) tracks him down to do one last job, and he realizes that he kind of missed the getting even with the bad guys, hustling the hustlers.”

But getting back in the game makes staying on the wagon, Hutton says – “It’s all about staying off the bottle. It’s hard for him. While drinking used to be something that allowed him to escape himself and self-medicate, it now represents something terrifying to him, and that’s the thought of getting lost and getting out of control. He’s replaced that addiction…with a need to be in control. And that’s almost too much. As the season goes on, it’s a cause for concern for the rest of the team.”

That’s not surprising, since the show is, after all, about people who gleefully break the law, but for a good cause. If any of them were well-adjusted, there wouldn’t be a show. Fortunately, everyone on the team has a good amount of dysfunction to go around, Nathan’s control issues and still-unresolved grief over his son’s death, to Parker’s social awkwardness after a grim life in foster care. Hutton says he enjoys playing Nathan, but swears he’s acting.

“He’s a pretty exhausting person, way too in control of everything, thinking he has the answers to everything,” Hutton says. “He’s not an open book at all. That’s interesting to play, but I’m much different…I’m not as self-conscious or closed off. Ford is all about the work, getting it done. “

Hutton forged a career in film for playing complicated, layered characters, like the troubled neglected son of “Ordinary People,” which won him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1980, or the in-over-his-head military school student under siege in “Taps,” and continued on the big and small screens for the next two decades. Because he always went back and forth between the two, including his well-received directing and acting duties as the wry Archie on A&E’s “Nero Wolfe,” he says he never experienced or acknowledged a stigma attached to working on TV.

“When I did ‘Ordinary People,’ I did a couple of TV movies after that,” he says. “For me, there was no difference. It was good material. I did a year on (NBC’s) ‘Kidnapped’, for instance.”

He adds that TNT, which currently employs Oscar winner Holly Hunter (“Saving Grace”), and movie stars Kyra Sedgwick(“The Closer”) and Jada Pinkett Smith (“HawthoRNe”), is able to attract high-profile actots “because of a commitment to the material, the way it’s allowed the people making the shows to follow through on their vision and not meddle too much. That stigma seems to have gone away a long time ago.”