NBC’s Crossing Lines: The Globalization of the American Episodic Cop Show?

Things I hate to admit:  I’m watching a new NBC show.  Things I like to admit but will eventually regret:  that new show stars Donald Sutherland.  

I jest (a little) because at present I have come to believe (and I’m not alone) that NBC is the network where all new shows go to die.  Also, Donald Sutherland, who I like a lot as an actor, has not had a lot of luck in his recent television endeavors.  (I really enjoyed him as the Speaker of the House, Nathan Templeton, in ABC’s Commander in Chief [2006-2007] and as the head of a Kardasian-like family, Tripp Darling, in ABC’s Dirty, Sexy Money [2007-2009], but alas both of those shows were short-lived).  Plus it’s a summer replacement show and the odds are always stacked against those.

The show, Crossing Lines, is centered around a fictionalized specialized crime unit working for the International Criminal Court to investigate serialized crimes that cross international boundaries.  The main character is Carl Hickman (William Fichtner), a former NYPD officer whose life has unraveled after being injured on the force.  Other team mates include an Italian anti-mafia covert specialist, a German tech specialist, a French crime analysis, and an Irish weapons/tactical expert. 

I’m not usually into episodic crime shows, so I’m somewhat surprised I’m watching the show but the pilot was fast-paced and, as other critics have noted, the European backdrop was a nice change for a police procedural.  The first episode found the crime unit racing to find a serial killer who was staging ritualistic murders in major European cities.  (Although the Scooby-Doo moment where we realize why the man was killing these women after dressing them up in retro outfits and chasing them through the woods was a bit cliché and Oedipal – he was reenacting his first murder… of his mother).   But the episode pulled on the heart strings a bit (one woman of the unit was captured and rescued while another was killed at the final moment) and provided enough intriguing character backstory to make me want to tune in again (Hickman is still trying to find the child abductor who injured him years back and his boss, Major Louis Daniel, is trying to bring his son’s murderer to justice). 

I’m not sure I’ll find much in this show to further my research agenda, or even much to analyze here on this space, but for now the program can hang out on my DVR and balance out the feminized drizzle that is accumulating there