Watched the first episode on TNT tonight and it was an interesting, fun experience. Interesting to see what goes on on those calls that I hear broadcast on a police scanner, fun to see what places I could recognize or look up (at one point, a guy gets arrested at Olympic Pizza in Wolcott Square - hey, I've been there! - the show ends with the arrest of a guy who walked out of this building [2] in Roxbury - where, jeez, there was a shootout [3] early this morning).
Who couldn't love a show that posits "coffee and chicken pahm" as a cop's cleanse and asks the question: "Why do you think it's OK to take your penis out of your pants on Hyde Park Avenue?"
Donnie Wahlberg also found some officers to provide actual drama even off the job, such as the cop whose twin sister is a drug addict (probably fortunately for both of them, in Lynn). There was the odd couple of detectives bickering over where to get lunch (one finally suggests sushi in Westie) and the two cops married to each other.
It wasn't perfect. Wahlberg spent way too much money and time on glamor shots from helicopters of downtown skyscrapers and, of course, the Tobin, none of which had anything at all to do with the vignettes of cops on the beat in Dorchester, Roxbury and Hyde Park. These shots got wicked annoying after awhile (and one suspects only a local would realize that one shot of downtown across the harbor was taken from a sewage-treatment plant).
And there was one odd thing: We see two cops patrolling Geneva Avenue and then, all of a sudden, they're responding to a fight in Hyde Park. Really?
But I'll probably watch again next week.