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Though its pedigree was top-drawer, the fine CBS police series
Brooklyn South never really clicked with primetime audiences (or,
according to critics of the network, never got a chance to click). All the same,
the program offered interesting possibilities for its famous creators to decant
old wine into new bottles. Steven Bochco and his lead writer on NYPD
Blue, David Milch, produced this show about uniform cops working a tough
New York City beat while coping with the professional and personal fallout of
sundry catastrophes. If the series didn't establish, as NYPD Blue did, a
new benchmark in stylish television from the start, it certainly shocked
audiences into high-stakes drama with a premiere in which several key characters
are slaughtered during an ambush by a rooftop sniper.
Not
surprisingly, Brooklyn South's ensemble approach and busy episodes
(comprised of multiple, character-driven stories) most closely resemble the form
and balanced tones of Bochco's classic Hill Street
Blues. As such, each installment can be as ghoulishly funny (Michael
DeLuise's officer Phil Roussakoff, moonlighting at a funeral home, causes some
consternation when he takes a nap in a coffin) as it is brutal (the usual
murders, suicides, etc.) and emotionally stark (love as a sure path to despair).
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