Cop who doesn’t play by the rules. African-American fe male chief. New partners who are opposites and can’t possibly get along. Cops who could moonlight as supermodels.
If you think “The Chicago Code,” Fox’s new police drama debuting tonight, is the same old/same old, think again. For one thing, the female police chief is only half African-American. Now that’s unique and new — right?
But that’s about as far as this new show goes to be original and different from almost every formula cop show on TV now, then and even before then.
That doesn’t mean that it’s not good — it just means it’s not original in any way.
Shawn Ryan, the guy who brings you “Chicago Code” and was also behind the very good “The Brotherhood,” wrote in a truly condescending letter addressed to “Critics, Bloggers, Tweeters, Tastemakers and others who work in their pajamas” (what?) that in “Chicago Code” he’s telling “a distinctly Midwestern story.”
I don’t know how distinctly Midwestern it is, but the cop characters are ones we’ve seen before — in New York, Las Vegas, DC, LA and Miami, to name a few.
Jason Clarke, the fantastically charismatic actor who was also in “Brotherhood,” plays the rogue cop, Jarek Wysocki. Without him the show would dissolve faster than April snow in Chicago. He’s so good he almost gets away with cheesy dialogue like, “I’m just a lowly homicide detective. I can’t fix the city’s plumbing and neither can you!”
How well he acts is evident when his boss, the new chief, Teresa Colvin, played by Jennifer Beals — whom I love, but not here — answers, “One toilet at a time, detective . . . one toilet at a time.” Painful.
Beals is not just miscast here, but her character is poorly formed compared to that of Clarke’s character. She’s supposed to be tough but she caves every time Wysocki or even her secretary tells her she’s wrong. She also cries and needs a hug now and then while fighting political corruption. Wrong.
On tonight’s premiere, Wysocki meets and rejects new partner Caleb (Matt Lauria), and he and Colvin try to solve a suspicious murder that is linked to the most powerful and corrupt man in town, Alderman Ronin Gibbons (Delroy Lindo). Lindo is so good — and his character is such a familiar figure in New York politics, at least — you will want crooked Gibbons to have his own breakout show.
The locales are great, the plots are interesting and the acting for the most part is good — although they should have cast actors who don’t look like lingerie models.
Gritty dramas deserve actors who look real. Think “The Fighter.” Now that’s casting.