Gritty cop drama in motor city
Detroit has been getting a fair amount of drama love due to its fall from grace as the heart of American manufacturing. Last year they had Hung which led a teacher to turn to prostitution and this year we have the police procedural, next up is Detroit 1-8-7. The selling point is the crazy high murder rate and a return to our screens for The Sopranos
The plot is simple enough, the cops arrive at the scene of a double homicide in a pharmacy, at first it looks like it was the result of a botched robbery, but seasoned veteran Detective Louis Fitch suspects more is at hand and robbery was not the motive. As is always the case, there is a rookie in the precinct who is eager to prove himself to the less personable Fitch, Fitch offers all his advice via a phone call, even if only standing a few feet away. A third murder on a bridge is being investigated by Sergeant Longford and Detective Mahajan but when forensics link the crimes they find their suspect and track him down a confrontation with hostages. Fitch puts his life on the line to negotiate, bearing a darker side to his unknown personality.
When compared to other new police procedural dramas this season, Detroit 1-8-7 is by the far the grittiest, most the action takes places at or on cloudy days making it feel rundown and depressing even during scenes of comic relief. This at least sets it apart from the competition in some respect, but in real story terms there is nothing new here to get overly excited about – it is the same old story in different packing. Further more it is still network television, so although it tries to be gritty it can’t quite extend down to the depths of FX’s The Shield
Some of the best comedy can be found in drama, this is often due to well thought out characters rather than set ups and punchlines which can feel unnatural and forced funny. Amongst the grit of the pilot there is a fair amount of humour from both Fitch and Washington as they struggle to find a way to work together. This is really important as the darkness will only feel dark if we have light to compare it to.
Imperioli is very welcome back on our screens and it is great to see him turn to a brooding thinker rather than the rash ambitious gangster, he plays his silence well and lingers in your mind long after the after characters are forgotten, for they are not nearly so well drawn. There is an interesting scope and darkness to be pealed away to reveal why the character keeps those around him at such a distance.
What is interesting is that the show was originally envisioned and shot as a faux documentary, but abandoned this after the city of Detroit banned camera crews from following real officers after a controversial police shooting during filming of the A&E documentary series The First 48. Scenes from the pilot were re-shot, but from time to time remnants of the concept survive. Although we have lost scenes such as Fitch grabbing one of the documentary cameras to smash a car window that brilliantly break the wall and show us something we have not seen before. This shift in focus has still not fully happened in the pilot and we are left with is a show that is either evolving or devolving in front of our eyes. Right Detroit 1-8-7 has more promise that most cop shows, but falls far short from the best.
Created / Written by: Jason Richman
Directed by: Jeffrey Nachmanoff
Starring: Michael Imperioli, Natalie Martinez, Jon Michael Hill, James McDaniel, Aisha Hinds, D.J. Cotrona, Shaun Majumder, Erin Cummings
Date premièred: 21st September 2010
UK Details: TBC
and the Emmy award winning 
making it the only traditional multi-camera sitcom in the 2 hour line up of Wednesday night comedy (the fourth was show is another hit from last year 
and the 20 / 30 something angst is transferred over here only now it feels tired and overdone. While watching Better With You it can feel like watching a show from 90s, it is tame, predictable, bland and packed with characters we have seen a dozen times before. The weak jokes are based on characters being too stupid to exist, for example the older sister telling the boyfriend of her younger sister that she doesn’t want to get married until her social security becomes insolvent – this requires all three to be stupid – the boyfriend belives it, the girlfriend doesn’t question it and sister thinks this titbit will delay the engagement. I know this is a comedy and not a serious drama and perhaps I could let this go if the script wasn’t packed so many more clunkers. It is bad writing on the one episode that has to stand up stronger than all the others.
, but since 
and 
, it stars Courtney Cox (
) the show is certainly packing some veteran talent, even relative new comer Dan Byrd (Aliens in America) delivers a confident performance.
hit the small screen in 2001 it ushered in a new era of big budget television shows with huge scope and story arcs. With the exception of 
, many of these shows crumbled quickly under the weight of their big budgets and diminishing audience figures. Shows like 
limped into a second season, while 
struggled to reach a season climax, 
got canned after 10 episodes leaving the remaining 3 unaired for months. So make no mistake there is a huge risk making this sort of drama, the idea has to be good, it has to hit hard on day one and keep the audience coming back, because once the train has left the station no one wants to jump on.
came out and hit hard at Comic-Con, they showed clips from the pilot, took questions from the audience and gave away a few tantalising details. Positive word of mouth helped the show deliver a strong debut both in America and the UK.
of the same name by Robert J. Sawyer, but the differences are obvious – in the book the flash forward is 21 years and the lead character is a particle physicist. Most likely the writers have taken the idea of the book and run off in a new direction (like how 
changed everything from the 
by Richard Matheson). As usual the pilot is all about setting the scene and introducing us to the characters.
we were given 2 things, “save the cheerleader, save the world” which served as the series midpoint and the bomb in the city which was season finale. In FlashForward we are given a date in April and the show producers have confirmed that the season finale will air on that date. Having a direction and an end point really helps focus the audience on a goal, this is an ongoing problem is Lost, you really have no idea where it is going.
, which itself was based on the 
of the same name by John Updike. This is not the first time someone has tried to make The Witches of Eastwick into a TV series, the first attempt was in 1992, a pilot was shot and aired, but NBC failed to be picked up. Things then went quiet for 10 years, but in 2002 FOX tried again, with Marcia Cross who, when the show failed to be picked up, went to on star as Bree in 
in 2008 and the stage musical probably helped raise the profile of the source material, making it a slightly more tempting offer for the commissioners.
is set on board a space ship on a ten year mission to explore a distant star, the 12 man crew spend their time playing with
was pitched as ‘
in space’, and is a multinationally produced show made by Fox (US), BBC (UK), Omni Film, CTV, SPACE (Canada) and ProSieben (Germany). Set in the year 2052, man has already landed on Mars, but now they are going on a 6 year mission to visit other planets in the solar system (Optimistically hoping for 6 seasons?). The pilot sees the selected galactic adventures launch into space before a couple of astronauts get sick and one of those goes off the deep end and ventures out for a space walk. Two replacement astronauts are sent up including the first man to land on Mars who left 2 of his colleagues behind on the red planet to die. Unlike the reality show being produced for the earth audience in Virtuality, the crew of Defying Gravity are making a documentary. With love in the air, the astronauts lucky enough to hook up are hoping that Ridley Scott was right and that ‘in space no one can you scream.’
