Critic Reviews

Blue Bloods enters this rough neighborhood with the right personnel, and, living up to its name, a solid pedigree.

If it pulls off what it seems capable of doing, Blue Bloods should be both a good cop show and an evocative family drama. So something for everyone, just like a good Sunday dinner.

A potent brew of family melodrama, crime-thriller tension and conspiratorial intrigue, Blue Bloods may actually bring some viewers back onto the sinking ship of Friday-night television.

The best new cop drama of a TV season that has more police than a presidential motorcade. Blue Bloods doesn't have the best time slot on TV, but it's got some of the strongest characters and performances.

Blue Bloods excels through its high-tone production values--Sinatra and Alicia Keys on the soundtrack; urban texture memorably captured across multiple boroughs--and standout performances from Selleck and Wahlberg, whose moral ambiguity and thinly veiled powder-keg fury, passed down by lineage, promises to fuel the series through a gripping first season--provided audiences tune in.

This is a solid hour that feels perfectly attuned to the CBS lineup, although it's less formulaic than what you usually find on Fridays.

The plot is unlikely to interfere with the real draw of Bloods, which is watching a terrific, mature, extremely well-chosen cast interact.

I know the whole thing sounds been-there-done-that dopey, but Wahlberg and Selleck are so charismatic that somehow, in their hand(cuffs), it all seems almost new. Yes, it's worth the watch.

The best thing about Bloods, aside from the return of Selleck to weekly TV, is that it breaks with the nearly 20-year tradition of dark, gritty cop shows ushered in by NYPD Blue. The weakest thing about Bloods is that it can't resist adding a conspiracy story line to its cases-of-the-week structure.

Bloods isn't groundbreaking, but there are hints of a deeper scandal woven into the solid plot. Worth checking out. [25 Oct 2010, p.39]