Polishing Up the Badge

By James Poniewozik

In a day when homeland security and amber alerts have informally deputized every Shoney's customer and freeway commuter, TV is reflecting reality: this fall it seems everyone is on the beat. There's the cabbie who solves crimes (CBS's Hack), the ex-cop who sees ghosts (UPN's Haunted) and the amnesiac genius who helps nab crooks (Fox's John Doe). What stands out is that several of the shows are packaging their hoary stories in some of the flashiest visuals on TV. As the old 7-Up slogan goes, they're the same thing, only different.

The old-crime-in-new-bottles strategy owes a lot to the forensics hit CSI, which uses high-tech camera tricks to underscore its theme of better crime fighting through science. Its spin-off, CSI: Miami (CBS, Mondays, 10 p.m. E.T.), likewise offers stylish flashback scenes, overexposed with flashbulb-like bursts of light, and special effects that take us on a Fantastic Voyage--style journey inside pieces of evidence. The setup is similar enough to satisfy CSI fans, but the few variations are missteps, especially the grim performances and the broadly telegraphed sexual tension between leads David Caruso and Kim Delaney. Still, in a show where "acting" consists of wearing a lab coat and staring meaningfully at a rivet or a corpse, these flaws shouldn't hurt the ratings.

The entry that has garnered the most buzz is NBC's Boomtown (Sundays, 10 p.m. E.T.), which tells each story from the perspective of several characters. But don't believe the early hype that compares it to Akira Kurosawa's film Rashomon: that's like saying because 24 takes place in one day, it's TV's Ulysses. Kurosawa questioned the nature of truth, telling a story through unreliable narrators. Boomtown's relatively straightforward narrative mainly means you get to see car crashes from two different angles. (CSI's flashbacks, which change as the investigators get closer to the truth, are more Rashomon-esque.) The cast, however, is fine, especially Donnie Wahlberg as a hangdog detective with a mentally ill wife, and the writing above average, though a bit grandiose. If you need a 15th cop show to watch this year, you could do worse.

But the real class of this oversize field is Robbery Homicide Division (CBS, Fridays, 10 p.m. E.T.), from Michael Mann. In the 1980s, Mann changed the look of the cop show, first with Miami Vice, then (and more to his credit) with the hard-bitten serial drama Crime Story. RHD is police drama at its most minimal: a brusque L.A. detective (Tom Sizemore) investigates brutal acts by bad people--no back story, no moral, no attempts at uplift. What set it apart are the haunting music and the disorienting, bravura visuals--sometimes several minutes without dialogue--that turn L.A. from a neutral backdrop into a jumpy, polyglot place of seedy beauty. It's an art film disguised as a gripping meat-and-potatoes action show.

For the heir of Miami Vice, look not to Mann but to Fastlane (Fox, Wednesdays, 9 p.m. E.T.), about two buddy cops who use--and destroy--confiscated sports cars and other pricey toys to catch high rollers. It disproves the theory that TV, a middlebrow medium, is neither as smart as the smartest movies nor as dumb as the dumbest. Fastlane is, blissfully, exactly as dumb as the dumbest movies. Made by the uni-monikered director McG (Charlie's Angels), it reproduces the high-gloss, empty-calorie experience of a summer action flick, down to the loud soundtrack and the black-guy-white-guy jokes. It's crass, pandering, cliched--and fun. (A scene with the undercover black cop, played by Bill Bellamy, line dancing at a redneck bar is a pure 48 Hours rip-off but one of the few genuine laughs of the new season.) Adapting the trash glamour of today's rap videos, as Vice did with 1980s videos, it's also fun to look at. With Fastlane--as with much of this year's cop crop--turn off the sound, and you might even believe you're watching something fresh and new.