TV

Leary’s new ‘Sirens’ to be the ‘Scrubs’ for first-responders

Denis Leary has become a pro at mining the world of emergency responders for entertainment — with police officers in “The Job” and firefighters in “Rescue Me” — and now he’s taking on EMTs for the new USA Network sitcom “Sirens.”

Executive-produced by Leary and Bob Fisher (“Wedding Crashers”), “Sirens” (Thursday, 10 p.m.) is USA’s first original half-hour comedy in more than a decade. It follows three Chicago EMTs who are great at their jobs — but lousy at pretty much everything else in their lives.

And where a drama would focus on the most intense 10 percent of first responders’ days, “Sirens” looks to mine the more mundane aspects of the other 90 percent their jobs for humor, in the way that “Scrubs” did for doctors and “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” does for cops.

“We really wanted to … focus on the levity, the light side of things, what gets these guys through,” star Kevin Daniels tells The Post. “They’re looking for ways to entertain themselves and keep focus, and also to help with those horrific things they do see. I like to think of the show as a love letter to those guys and what they do.”

Johnny (Michael Mosley) is the leader of the “Sirens” trio — a handsome, sports-loving guy who is in love with his girlfriend but can’t commit to moving in with her. Hank (Daniels) is his best friend and the most reasonable of the group who also happens to be gay, and Brian (Kevin Bigley) is the rookie who still lives with his parents.

To cope with the stresses of their job, they tell jokes and give each other a hard time, and though they respond to emergency calls in the show, the focus is on how the situation affects each member of the group.

“[They] get into these wacky little capers … it ultimately lives in a fun, light place,” Mosley says. “But we definitely touch on the realism of it.”

Though Leary won’t appear in the series, the actors say he’s been very hands-on, weighing in on every script and being present on set for the majority of filming in Chicago.
(Production wrapped last November, thankfully saving the cast and crew from the Windy City’s brutal winter.)

“He has such a sense of what’s funny and what’s genuine and what’s going to be affecting,” Daniels says. “He has such respect for these guys and knows what’s going to ring true and what won’t.”

To lend to the realism, “Sirens” had three real-life EMTs on set while the show was filming to consult on storylines, and all the outrageous emergencies portrayed in the series are based on actual 911 calls.

In the pilot, those calls include the guys answering a call that has them accidentally bust in on two senior citizens bumping uglies. Another storyline has a patient ask them to erase his browser history (which turns out to contain some very disturbing pornography).

Though the show seems to be playing to a young male audience with some of that humor, its stars say the show also has a lot of heart that should have broad appeal.

“It is based on a friendship and these people truly care about each other and are willing to put themselves on the line for each other,” Mosley says.

“That’s universal — that concept is not devoted to one demographic or class.”