Entertainment

The mop top cop: Too-young police commissioner’s story

HI, HANDSOME: Theo James is the “Golden Boy” of the title, whose career unfolds in flashbacks. (
)

If the idea of one more cop show is enough to make you go out and commit a crime, then for sure you’ll want to stay away from “Golden Boy” — yet one more cop show.

And if yet one more cop show about the brash young rookie and the older, tired guy thisclose to retirement is enough to make you go completely insane and start watching, say, “Smash” or something equally upsetting, then for sure you want to stay away from “Golden Boy.”

However, if you love cop shows that aren’t really procedurals so much as stories about the internal politicking of the NYPD, than maybe “Golden Boy” is just what you’re looking for.

Theo James plays Detective Walter William Clark Jr., the youngest police commissioner in NYPD history. We will learn — through a series of annoying, inexplicably high-speed flashbacks — how this 34-year-old, ridiculously baby-faced kid became master of the giant domain that is the New York City Police Department as he tells his entire story to a reporter, played by schlubby Richard Kind.

(As usual, the woman who plays the female reporter dresses like a stripper and acts like a slut. What else is new?)

Anyway, as Clark tells his story to the male reporter, we get to see how it all started (heroic killing of a perp who nearly killed another officer, blah, blah), and how Clark then demanded to be put on homicide after that — despite the fact that his hands shake whenever he holds a gun.

Anyway, we see that on the first day on the job, he is annoyed to be partnered with (yes, that again) older detective Don Owen (Chi McBride), who is two years away from retirement, and with young, ambitious Detective Christian Arroyo (Kevin Alejandro), who speaks in wolf pack metaphors. He considers himself the Alpha dog.

Meanwhile, brooding Clark, who has a troubled sister, explains to the then-commissioner that he deserves to be made a homicide detective because “I made my bones from the age of 9 when I stole food for me and my sister.”

James, who played Mr. Pamuk on “Downton Abbey” — the Turkish playboy who slept with Mary and then promptly dropped dead — is an English actor (real name Theo Taptiklis).

Since no Americans can play Americans on TV any longer, it’s only fair to say that he does well by the New York accent — even though this dead ringer for James Franco looks entirely too young to be a believable police commissioner.

Interestingly, in the script, the young cop thinks he’s better than the older cop, who is too laid back.

Of course he learns he’s misjudged his laid-back partner, in the same way older actor McBride quietly steals the spotlight from all the young, er, Turks.

McBride’s such a scene stealer in fact, Detective Clark should arrest him.