Although famously troubled, the LAPD continues to get great pub in prime time.
The wattage this time comes from "Robbery Homicide Division," a gripping, street-raw, kick-butt new series that benefits from Tom Sizemore's seething presence as a bulldog police lieutenant who works L.A. murders. It's from Michael Mann, who got famous himself when producing NBC's "Miami Vice" in the 1980s before directing such features as "Heat," "The Insider" and "Ali."
"Robbery Homicide Division" opens impressively on CBS tonight following the 9 p.m. debut of "Hack," a drama of redemption about a disgraced former Philadelphia cop who wears his guilt like a truss while eking out a living as a taxi driver doing good deeds. The best deed of all would be a major rewrite, for "Hack" is relentlessly ordinary when not flat-out comical.
Facing it on ABC is the premiere of "That Was Then," a really bad hour of all-too-familiar drama about an unfulfilled 30-year-old who awakens one morning to discover he's 16 again. The series has its own zits, though.
In other words, the best bet for drama at 9 Fridays remains the intriguing amnesiac of Fox's new "John Doe."
Sizemore's Sam Cole knows exactly who he is--a night animal on L.A.'s mean streets in a series affirming crime as TV's cream. That's been so for years, from NBC's "Homicide: Life on the Street" and original "Law & Order" and ABC's "NYPD Blue," to HBO's "The Sopranos" and "The Wire" and Showtime's "Street Time." These created their own golden age. As for crime-fighting lite, the USA Network's droll new "Monk," with Tony Shalhoub as an obsessive-compulsive ex-cop who solves cases with the help of his personal nurse, is rather terrific too.
Shootouts course through Mann's highly ethnic new CBS series, with Asian gang violence over drugs driving the premiere and a cop killing that mingles Asians and Latinos in Episode 2. The fluid camera work in some of these death scenes is almost detached and in conflict with the music track. Instead of softening, though, the technique accentuates the madness and folly of these tragedies in an inky atmosphere of body bags and teeming urban life.
Charging through it all is Cole, one of those menacing, hot-glare figures who intimidates by speaking to people right in their faces, eyeball to eyeball, nose to nose. And always nearby are Barry "Shabaka" Henley, Klea Scott and Michael Paul Chan as members of his unit. They're an interesting group.
