What do you get when you combine people under 30 who look like they fell out of GQ and Elle with a badge?
Cop shows that take the impossibly good looking and have them solve impossibly difficult crimes — often on the first day on the job.
Welcome to the land of TV. While the formula didn’t work in the much-hyped, and now cancelled, “NYC22” on CBS, “Rookie Blue” a Canadian import, is back again for Season 3 on ABC tonight.
The difference? One had Robert De Niro as its producer and was created by best-selling author, screenwriter and writer for shows such as “The Wire,” Richard Price.
The other is a summer import that nobody figured anybody would notice. Whoops.
The one nobody would notice comes back tonight giving those who didn’t watch it last summer a chance to catch up on its many back stories.
Yes, it is ridiculous to imagine that everyday, working cops have haircuts that even John Edwards couldn’t afford and faces and bodies that would make Gisele worry about cellulite.
That said, tonight’s episode has William Shatner — the Betty White of men.
The guy is so good he makes you forget everybody else’s back stories and frontal assets.
Tonight, he plays the grandfather of a little girl who disappeared at a fair seven years earlier while with him. Shatner has taken to the bottle, but he hasn’t stopped searching for the girl — now, presumably a 14-year-old.
The story comes together when he is involved in an accident with officers Andy (Missy Peregrym) and Sam (Ben Bass).
Both cops were suspended for “behavior unbecoming an officer” last season and . . . well, it’s a long story.
Short version? Who but William Shatner could get away with being drunk and saying, “You look like you know how to wipe your own ass,” on network television without looking like, well, an ass?
There are plenty of good subplots and plenty of eye candy, too, all in blue. Not neurosurgery, but it won’t rot your brain either.