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“Painted Ladies” – When two bodies fall out of a hotel window and land on Internal Affairs cars, Frank looks into why the I.A. guys were staking out a hotel, on THE BRIDGE, Saturday, Aug. 7 (8:00-9:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

SERIES REGULARS:
Frank Leo……………………….……………… Aaron Douglas
Tommy Dunn ……………………………………Paul Popowich
Jill ……………………………………………….. Inga Cadranel
Bernie Kantor……………………………………..Frank Cassini
Billy…………………………………………………Theresa Joy
Abby St. James……………………………………….Ona Grauer
Ed Wycoff………………………………………….Michael Murphy
Alex ………………………………………..Genadijs Dolganovs

RECURRING CAST:
Iris ……………………….Miranda Edwards

GUEST CAST:
Carrillo (I.A.) …………………..Kevin Hare
Yuri Babchenko ………..Lubomir Mykytiuk
Duff Matthews ……………..Michael Teigen
Raisa …………………………Inna Ivanova
Uniform Cop #1 ……………Matt Macdonald
Croft …………………………………Al Sapienza
Larissa …………………Rayisa Kondracki
Ken (The Doorman) ………..Sterling Jarvis
Tanya (Yuri’s Wife) ……..Jelena Zivanovic
Max Rytell ……………………John Cassini

WRITTEN BY: John McFetridge
DIRECTED BY: Helen Shaver
GENRE: CRIME DRAMA, ACTION, ADVENTURE, SUSPENSE, MYSTERY
RATING: To Be Announced

I never had any intention of doing a write up on The Bridge. First of all contrary to my most recent write ups I am not a huge fan of cop shows. I have nothing against them per say, I just don’t find them to be all that entertaining. Well no that’s not true. I do have a sick tendency to watch CSI:NY, but I don’t cover the show and I don’t write about it. Second of all when I had first heard about the new joint venture between CTV and CBS the only reason I wanted to check it out in the first place is that I have an over the moon crush on the “Chief” or for you non-BSG fans, Aaron Douglas. Third of all, if it hadn’t been for the fact that my plans fell through on Saturday night I never would have seen the premiere episodes and probably would have forgotten all about it.

So those were my reasons for not wanting to do a review and they are all perfectly good and acceptable reasons. Except that about 40 minutes into the first episode something happened to make all those reasons moot. I found that I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. Whether it was the way Aaron sucked you into his scenes with his honest portrayal or that each and every other character on the show didn’t appear to step right out of a magazine cover story. The Bridge wasn’t a show about cops being superheroes for the sake of being super, no it was a show about police officers being human; the good and the bad.

I give The Bridge 4 Andy Sipowitzs out of 5.

This Canadian series from earlier this year gets imported to CBS for the summer just like “Flashpoint,” and I’m pleased to report that this show is considerably better, even if it’s not completely on target just yet. The pilot certainly takes its sweet time in setting up the back story of the show, flashing back a year in time and hinting at just how much corruption exists in the government while firmly establishing union leader Frank Leo as a man of conviction, principle, and resolve. I’m familiar with actor Aaron Douglas from his supporting role on “Battlestar Galactica” as Chief Tyrol, and seeing him take on a lead part is a bit strange. He did have a pivotal role to play on BSG, but he was never really front-and-center all by himself. On this show, however, it seems like it’s often him against the world, uniting the police force against corruption yet remaining just as careful not to trust anyone for fear of their involvement in the aforementioned corruption. Douglas seems decently capable of handling the task, sometimes exerting a bit too much fervor for the cause in a few of the pilot’s key scenes. The trouble with a show like this is that it hinges heavily on long-term plotlines and less on individual episode payoffs and weekly cases. That could prove interesting, but we’ll have to wait until next week to see officially who the main characters really are. The pilot was definitely intriguing and got more interesting as it went on, which is always a good thing. There are so many other shows premiering this week that this one may get tossed out if it doesn’t pick up quickly. It could certainly be engaging for a bit, though.

How will it work as a series? As mentioned above, the problem is that it’s too long-term and may not focus in enough on the short-term. Many people, however, have decried existing shows for their failure to zoom out to the big picture (like “Burn Notice”), so that strategy could work here, especially because it seems like Frank has a long, hard battle ahead of him.
How long will it last? Well, Canadian network CTV renewed the show for a second season last month. That’s certainly a good sign, although CBS doesn’t necessarily have to continue airing it, like it did with “Dexter” a couple of years ago and NBC did with CTV’s “The Listener.” Given the success of “Flashpoint,” however, CBS may be inclined to stick with this one if it catches on with American audiences.

Pilot grade: B

iTunes USA store
Each episode is $2.99 (for HD) and $1.99 (for Standard Definition). Or you can buy a season pass for $14.99 (HD) / $10.99 (SD).
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewTVSeason?id=379477981&s=143441

LIONHEARTED: Aaron Douglas is union leader Frank Leo.

Aaron Douglas is getting a taste of what it’s like to be The Man. 

As Toronto police union boss Frank Leo on CBS’ “The Bridge” (series premiere tonight at 8 on WBZ, Ch. 4), Douglas is stepping up from his former role as Chief Galen Tyrol on Syfy’s “Battlestar Galactica.” 

“Now I know what it feels like to be James Gandolfini or Kiefer Sutherland,” Douglas told the Herald during a recent telephone interview from Toronto. “The guy who has to work every single day in every scene. It’s a big difference in workload for me.” 

In this TV series imported from Canada, Douglas plays a cop elected as the new union boss to lead 8,000 fellow officers. He comes up against street criminals, his bosses and corruption from within the ranks. 

“I like that he’s a real guy,” Douglas said. “I like that he’s honest and he tells it like it is. He doesn’t pull punches, he’s a real person. I love the fact that he has flaws. As an actor, the most interesting thing to do is play a character that’s flawed and does the best he can with the tools he has. He owns up and says he’s sorry.” 

Douglas’ cop-show viewing while growing up in Vancouver consisted of the 1980s spoof “Police Squad” and “Magnum, P.I.” – the latter primarily because his mother had an eye for Tom Selleck. 

Leo, he said, wouldn’t fit in on either of those shows. 

“Not everybody is going to like him,” he said. “But some people are really going to like him.” 

The 38-year-old spent four seasons as Tyrol on “Galactica.” During that show’s run, he was part of an ensemble, sharing the load. Now – not so much. 

“I remember the day before we started shooting (‘The Bridge’) pilot, I phoned (‘Galactica’ star) Edward James Almos and said, ‘Eddie, what do I do?’ And he said, ‘Be yourself.’ I thought that was nice advice.” 

In his higher-profile role, Douglas said he has the responsibility to dictate the tone of the set. 

“How you go, so goes the day,” he said. “If you’re grumpy and stomping around, the set gets tense and weird. If you’re light, everyone gets to lighten up. If someone is getting snippy, it’s your prerogative, your responsibility to take them aside and say, ‘Knock it off.’” 

“The Bridge” has already aired its first season on CTV in Canada and has been renewed for a second season there. At this point, Douglas is waiting to see what CBS has in mind for the show. 

He has traveled to many of the “Galactica” conventions around the United States. 

“The great thing about ‘Battlestar’ is that it gets you in the room and gets the conversation going with potential employers,” Douglas said. “Everywhere I go, producers love that show. They bring me in the room so they can meet me. They’ll say, ‘I love the Chief (Tyrol), man. You’re not right for anything in this movie, but I just wanted to meet you.’”

Ona Grauer and Aaron Douglas star in 'The Bridge'. (Ben Mark Holzberg, CBS / May 26, 2009)

TV critics love to point out that the difference between Canadian urban drama and American urban drama is tidiness – cleaner streets, graffiti-free walls. And certainly “The Bridge,” CBS’ new pickup from the north, deserves points for neatness. But in this case, Americans will know they’re viewing an import the moment the über narrative makes itself clear. “The Bridge” is about a street cop attempting to rid the force of corruption through … wait for it … its union.

The two-hour pilot chronicles the rise of Frank Leo ( Aaron Douglas, last seen as Galen Tyrol on “Battlestar Galactica”) from solid street cop to union boss as he struggles to battle injustice and keep police officers safe from their real enemy – the monomaniacal higher-ups.

Throughout the union is presented not only as a force for good, but a powerfully effective tool that could, under Frank’s leadership, effect real change. “You think this can’t be pulled down?” he asks, standing in front of police headquarters at the end of the second hour, having recently spearheaded a wildcat strike by simply suggesting it in a morning meeting.

In many ways, “The Bridge” is a superhero drama, with Frank wielding not the power to fly or atomic strength but the once-vaunted weapon of good faith collectivism, which went out of vogue here sometime after Sally Field picked up her Oscar for “Norma Rae.” (Am I the only one who finds it fascinating that after American TV writers spent so many hours on the picket lines three years ago, the only overtly pro-union show is Canadian?)

The socialist overtones of “The Bridge” are clear and unapologetic. Indeed, the bridge of the title is the one separating Toronto’s St. James Town projects from its posh neighbor Rosedale. “On this side here you got the poor, lying and cheating and stealing to pay the rent,” says Frank’s partner Tommy (Paul Popowich) as if speaking to a child, “and over this little bridge we go, you got the rich, lying and cheating and stealing…” “To collect the rent,” finishes Frank.

So there you are, hundreds of years of political theory reduced to a cop drama.

Clearly, creator Craig Bromell, himself a former Toronto police chief, has David Simon-like aspirations. As in “The Wire,” the corruption in the Toronto police department is systemic rather than the work of one or two villains (although the early appearance of an almost laughably Nazi-like female deputy chief assures us that Canada’s reputation for mildness does not preclude sexism).

But “The Bridge” does not have the depth, or the patience, of “The Wire.” In the pilot, things happen far too quickly and over-dramatically. Someone is using stolen police uniforms to steal from drug dealers and someone else is running down homeless people. Members of Frank’s Bridge Division face not one but two police brutality charges that we learn are simply attempts by the brass to leverage a prosecutor’s personal zeal for greater glory. Meanwhile, when Frank’s mentor kills himself, Frank manages to personally organize a police funeral (not allowed for suicides) but not without a price. The top dogs are now officially out to get him, through means that are so over the top you expect Jack Bauer to put in a special-guest appearance.

Anchoring all this wild-eyed I-sing-of-the-man-in-uniform preachifying is Douglas’ commanding performance and an equally strong supporting cast that includes Michael Murphy as the waffling but perhaps enigmatic chief of police and Stuart Margolin as Frank’s father, a longtime police union organizer who may have buried a few bodies of his own. The members of the Bridge precinct all have promise – Popowich as Tommy, Theresa Joy as Billy who wants to prove she’s just as tough as the guys – and of course, there’s an attractive prosecutor (Ona Grauer) who is drawn to Frank because of his rebellious sense of justice.

Although overblown in message and action, “The Bridge” is well-performed and worth watching if only to see if it will stand by its thesis: that real change comes from people working together. Or if it will succumb to the standards of the time and evolve into yet another show in which a male lead battles forces within and without to discover who he really is. This time in Canada.

Just under a month ago, I wrote about Rookie Blue, a Canadian cop procedural that was brought to our shores by ABC as an attempt to toss a blandly generic cop show on the air when there aren’t a lot of new blandly generic cop shows. Rookie Blue has been about the only scripted series ratings success this summer (albeit, a modest one and one that is helped immeasurably by its lead-in of summer hit Wipeout), so perhaps blandly generic Canadian cop shows are the next big thing. If that’s the case, then The Bridge is screwed. Because this is a show that shows evidence of a personality every so often. Elements of it feel overdone, but a lot of it is pretty fresh and gritty and interesting. More importantly, it talks about being a cop in a pretty uniquely Canadian way. It’s on CBS, so it’s screwed.

I don’t want to oversell The Bridge. It’s a weak summer for scripted programming so far, so it’s entirely possible this is standing out simply because it’s taking some chances with its storytelling. It definitely helps that Aaron Douglas is at the show’s center. Douglas, who’s probably best known as Chief Tyrol from Battlestar Galactica, is an appealing presence to stick in the middle of a show like this. He’s able to play the side of central character Frank that everybody likes. He’s able to play the side that’s a pain in the ass to his bosses. And he’s able to play the side that’s really worried about how his father is getting older and trying to learn everything he can from his dad before he passes on. There’s not a lot here that Douglas isn’t able to play as well as the vast majority of his American cop show counterparts, though there are a few stabs at romance that mostly fall flat.

But the real reason to tune in for The Bridge and the real reason that it’s probably doomed is because it’s attempting to tell something of a serialized storyline. Now, the show’s on CBS, so that means the network will likely have no patience for it (to say nothing of how it stuck the show on Saturdays), but the serialized story is actually kind of interesting, helped by the fact that it does seem to have a uniquely Canadian perspective. The bulk of the storyline is about labor unions, a topic that has mostly disappeared from U.S. TV, roughly as the importance of unions in our political sphere has corroded over the years (though our politicians never tire of raising the specter of them as a reason for Everything Being Awful). There are the usual cop show affectations – a lengthy plot about a guy who’s running over homeless people with his pickup is just not very good at all and takes up a surprising amount of time in the two episodes I’ve screened – but a lot of this is about the work-a-day cops realizing they’re getting a bum deal and rallying behind Frank to get a better one.

The one thing I don’t like about this storyline is that The Bridge is afraid to go all the way with it. The major thing that’s causing consternation against the cops is a growing fear that cops of The Bridge are simply being too brutal toward suspects. But the show goes out of its way to show us that these suspicions are unfounded and driven by a corrupt internal affairs department that hopes to ride those fears to a better standing within the department as a whole (and possibly promotions for its key personnel). When a video of a brutal beating leaks in the first episode, of COURSE the cops were doing it because they were provoked. There’s not really any attempt at subtlety here, and that hurts the show. Everybody’s a good guy or a bad guy, never both.

But the show is capable of such bravura sequences when it wants to be that it makes the predictable and generic stuff that much more disappointing in retrospect. The scenes between Frank and his dad are well-written, and a scene where a clandestine squad sweeps the house of a suspect cop, planting bugs and searching for evidence (as opera plays on the soundtrack) is nicely shot and edited. The performances, for the most part, are good as well, and the series does a good job of showing the moments when the cops do something bad, realize that things have gone from bad to worse, and then feel sickened by it. (In particular, there’s a car chase in the second episode that ends in a jolting and horrifying way, though the show does too little to follow up on it.)

At the same time, the more CBS-y stuff is often embarrassing. The soundtrack fills with obnoxious pseudo-rock music. The cop procedural stuff is either so overplotted that it becomes nonsensical or so underplotted that it feels like a million other shows of this type. The truly interesting stuff – basically, the serialized plot about the union stuff – very often gets overwhelmed by these elements, and it’s never clear why, exactly, Frank is still trying to run down this guy running over homeless people and understand why it’s happening when he’s stuck in a situation where he’s pretty sure that just about everyone in the department is against him and he has to root out the real traitors. It feels pointless and kind of abrupt.

But the show takes some appealingly dark turns in these first two episodes, turns that push Frank away from the good cop he wants to be and toward a more murky place. But then it backs away from it as quickly as it approaches those positions. Frank’s a good guy, remember? And so are all of his closest friends and confidants. And the bad guys? Oh, they’re SO BAD, so that means that whatever Frank does to them is justified, right? Except when he GOES TOO FAR. This whole show feels like someone in Canada saw The Shield and wanted to do the Canadian version of that, then had a long series of periodic failures of nerve.

If I sound ambivalent about this show, I am. There’s stuff in it that’s really, really good. There’s stuff in it that feels like it dropped in out of a ’70s cop show (and not a good one). On a Saturday night in the summer on CBS, though? It’s not a bad way to kill an hour, and that ultimately ends with me giving it a mild recommendation. There is going to be stuff in this show that will make you grit your teeth in disgust (oh, another, the actress playing Frank’s love interest is pretty bad), but it’s worth it in the end for its solid performances, its generally fine serialized storytelling, and the way it illuminates something closer to Canadian cop culture than a simple suggestion that all cops are alike everywhere. If Rookie Blue was simply too generic, The Bridge may ultimately suffer from being a different kind of generic. But it’s a kind of generic I enjoy more, and the lead actor is good. That’ll have to be enough for now.

“Sometimes life tells you what it wants you to do,” Frank Leo (Aaron Douglas) hers from his father. And sometimes, TV scripts tell you something else. Frank’s a street cop. His dad, Vic (Stuart Margolin), is a cop too, the sort of cop who’s back on the job two weeks after a heart attack. Caught between admiring and resenting Vic, Frank follows his dad’s lead on their relationship. “We don’t talk about feelings,” he says. “I don’t know his.”

At the start of The Bridge, the latest CTV series picked up for the summer by CBS, Frank and his partner Tommy (Paul Popowich) are headed over the bridge that links and divides Toronto’s St. James Town projects from upscale Rosedale. The guys lay out the metaphor: “On this side here,” says Tommy, “You got the poor, lying and cheating and stealing to pay the rent, and over this little bridge we go, you got the rich, lying and cheating and stealing…” Frank completes the thought: “To collect the rent.”

So now you know: the show looks at simultaneous divides and connections, between haves and have-nots, cops and citizens. For the most part Frank embodies this idea, telling his mentor, Hector (Gerry Mendicino), “All I ever wanted was to be a cop,” which for him, for now, means protecting the citizenry. What you don’t know in these first few minutes will quickly become clear: as Frank’s life becomes increasingly complicated—amid rumors of cops’ corruption and evidence of management’s bullying—he takes on yet another bridge-like role, as union president.

It’s unusual, certainly, to position a workers’ union of any kind at the center of a network TV series. Even more unusual, under Frank’s leadership, the Police Protective Association, is honorable. “I’m cleaning up this department top to bottom,” he tells his chief, Ed Wycoff (Michael Murphy), during one of several conversations that might best be described as negotiations. Frank is adamant, and so is The Bridge: he’s the good cop. Everyone else is less good.

That doesn’t mean Frank doesn’t have to compromise, or that the show doesn’t contemplate degrees of morality, what’s possible, what’s persuasive, and what’s tempting. It does so in snatches of plot and brief scenes: aside from setting up basic geography concerning the bridge, the two-part premiere episode doesn’t spend a lot of time on character details or relationships. Everything in Frank’s life, for instance, has to do with the job: when he plays cards with he guys and with his dad, they talk about plot points. When he takes a moment to pursue a romantic entanglement with another cop, Jill (Inga Cadranel), she calls it off mid-grope, reminding him that she has a girlfriend, someone he remembers (“Yeah, I met her once, she’s really nice”). Another romance, from the past, comes back to haunt him via Internal Affairs (the most bad cops): they threaten her and send her in with a wire to make him say something untoward. (She serves a plot turn here, making Frank look even more righteous, but her abjection also looks contrived.)

Frank doesn’t always guess right as to whom to trust and how he’s being manipulated, but he maintains a straight-arrow approach to the troubles that seem to pile on by the minute once the higher ups decide to put him in his place. The corruption is pervasive and costly (more than one cop is found dead during this first episode), and each instance only makes Frank more determined to do right things, even if this means trading off for some wrongish things too, in pursuit of a greater good. The give and take show who’s trustworthy among the race and class hierarchies: Frank’s friendly interactions with the Punjabi gangster Mani (Shaun Shetty) suggest he understands street politics; his more strained meetings with Wycoff, in dark cars and parking garages rather than offices, demonstrate that neither trusts the other.

These untidy relationships mean that The Bridge is less a set of standalone episodes than an actual serial. Frank’s own plot involves ongoing investigations of his own, and for now, he seems to be steps ahead of his adversaries. It helps that he befriends the new prosecutor Abby St. James (Ona Grauer), and that she’s got a conscience. She first appears on TV, pressing a case against a couple of cops caught on video beating a suspect in a park. You’ve seen the entire, 90-second-or-so incident, so you know the tape the Police Board has released to news stations is selective and deliberately incriminating (the point is to damn the cops and make trouble for the union). The woman cop who looks extra-aggressive in the TV clip worries that her case “in public” is lost: “You know how those videos can get misunderstood.” Yes you do know, but the longer version still looks rough, even if it might vindicate her. It’s a matter of degrees, again.

On one hand, the lesson here is basic: cop work is hard. On another hand, the show makes an interesting if not-so-new point concerning the entanglements of the law and media, their effects on one another, and how they obscure experience as much as they might expose it. The Bridge can’t sort out this dilemma, only reflect it.