The Chicago Code

As police superintendent Teresa Colvin, Jennifer Beals gives a revelatory, no-nonsense performance that should make Tom Selleck's mustache bristle with envy....This should be lots of fun. [7 Feb 2011, p.39]

Tension runs high throughout this densely layered story, which is well worth your time. Hope all the Super Bowl exposure pays off for this one.

This is a very smart, well-produced, great-looking cop show, one that does familiar things but does them in interesting ways.

It's a complex story, which may be why Ryan relies in part on an intrusive monologue-narration device to guide us. Still, the intrusions only momentarily interrupt the fast-moving plot, which twists agreeably without losing sight of its moral ambiguities.

The Chicago Code provides superior cop drama thanks to its cast--starting with Brotherhood's Jason Clarke and Friday Night Lights' Matt Lauria as tough street police--and its creator (Shawn Ryan, who gave us The Shield).

It may not be The Shield (what is?), and it isn't up to the standard of TV's other corruption-in-Chicago show, The Good Wife, currently the best drama on network TV. But after you get by the initial S.O.S. of the first episode, The Chicago Code may be better than the other police commissioner show, and at least as worthy to add to your weekly TV appointment lineup.

The Chicago Code may stick to police-procedural formula, but it does have most of the elements needed to make the show at least a moderate success. With better writing and a bit more imagination, it could do even better.