Tommy (2020)

A funny, horrifying, and generally thrilling account of a female Los Angeles police chief's rocky relations with the city's scummy, thieving (and, of course, male) power brokers.

Lately, the broadcast drama has a hard time competing for attention with shinier objects in the pay and streaming universes. But operating within those parameters, Falco's leadership quickly vaults "Tommy" to near the top of its class.

"Tommy" is quite intentionally a socially conscious construction, and while that's not necessarily to its detriment, its earnest approach to inclusion can at times get in the way of a viewer's ability to appreciate its worth as a solid character-driven procedural.

Where the show does best is in its treatment of Tommy’s private life. In depicting her tentative reconnection with her adult daughter (Olivia Lucy Phillip), a Angeleno-by-choice who left her work-crazed mom behind long ago, the show hits familiar beats nicely. ... A problem the show has yet to solve is that the kind of power she exercises when in uniform would tend to make her unknowable, and keeping her as open and big-hearted in every moment of the show’s running time defies belief.

Edie Falco is one of those actors we’ll watch in anything. And Tommy certainly is anything.

First-rate actress, compelling idea but neither can escape the clutches of a shopworn formula.

After the pilot, I was prepared to be enthusiastic about CBS having landed an above-average version of a very CBS-y show. After the second episode, I was prepared to savage the show. And after three? It's just another mediocre broadcast show that probably could have been a lot better.