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Last night saw the launch of new channel Sky Atlantic, and with it comes a whole set of new shows from the US. One of them, Blue Bloods, is set in New York City and follows Tom Selleck as Frank Reagan, the New York City Police Commissioner. Of course, there’s more than enough drama that comes with the job but Reagan is also the patriarch of a whole family involved in upholding the law. (Frank’s father, Henry [Len Cariou], actually held the Police Commissioner position before him.) His son Danny (Donnie Wahlberg) is a detective, his daughter Erin (Bridget Moynahan) is an assistant district attorney and his youngest son Jamie (Will Estes) is a Harvard graduate who is now also a newly graduated cop. (It’s worth remembering that his other son, Joe, was a police officer who died on the job.)
The result of this mix is a kind of interesting blend of family and police drama. The personalities of the characters make for some decent interactions, even if (on the whole) the family dynamic is slightly awkward and not quite believable. I anticipated that the majority of the focus would be on the character of Frank, however, the first episode was mostly concerned with Danny whilst still setting up a more mysterious (and potentially very interesting) arc with Jamie.
It’s always hard to judge a new series purely on what it displays within a pilot episode, and I must say that I’m not often drawn to police-based procedurals (they have to be pretty excellent for me to stick around). The story of this one focussed on a child abduction, and the extent to which a police officer can go to in order to obtain a confession (the show cleverly plays Erin and Danny against each other in this instance). Having the main plotline be about a paedophile, whilst unusual, is actually an easy route to getting an emotional reaction out of an audience (as people really don’t like to see kids in danger). The cynic in me views this as a way to hook viewers to the series whilst another side of me would be quick to commend Blue Bloods for approaching relatively risky subject matter.
For the most part, aside from a fairly engaging main story, Blue Bloods didn’t have me all that impressed. I felt that the standard of performances from the main cast was high, but that there was little they could do with the weak script. The dialogue, as is often the case with pilots, was very exposition-heavy and at times very clunky. The action of the first episode, also, was (aside from Danny’s police brutality) fairly predictable and provided nothing that I hand’t seen before. It’s unlikely that you’ll be getting much from Blue Bloods that isn’t present in a lot of other cop procedurals.
With that said, though, the acting-parts of Blue Bloods are compelling, and Tom Selleck is always a pleasure to watch. Even if I might be hard to impress when it comes to police drama, this is something that’s worth watching for its interesting mixture of family and cop stories. A more mysterious arc that looks to centre around corruption within the department (and how it relates to the death of Frank’s son Joe) is established by the end of the episode and could provide another good reason to watch. Blue Bloods has the potential to be a gripping cop series that is unafraid to tackle dark and intense stories, and even though I wasn’t won over by its first hour, I’ll almost certainly watch the show every once in a while.
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