K-Ville

This new police drama, set in gritty post-Katrina New Orleans, follows a pair of cops trying to keep themselves—and the city—together as the ravaged and crime-riddled area inches toward tearing itself apart. Marlin Boulet (Anthony Anderson) is a department vet born and raised in the Ninth Ward who is determined to return his neighborhood to its better days, while also dealing with a paranoid lack of trust caused by being abandoned by his former partner when the storm hit. His new partner, Trevor Cobb (Cole Hauser), is tight-lipped about his past, but plays the good cop to Boulet's loud and brash style. The two are hardly the buddy-cop duo Hollywood tends to offer, and the show is much less concerned with the tactical detail of the other handful of cop shows on the air. Rather, it relies on action and bullets to keep the plot moving—a device that starts to wear thin after the fourth shoot-out. While Anderson and the action are a bit over the top, the pilot isn't as politically charged as we expected, though future episodes could prove otherwise. It seems maybe the show is wishy-washy about how it wants to approach those issues, and until then, we're still on the fence about this series.