I’m not pointing any fingers, but CBS’s new drama Blue Bloods sounds an awful lot like the recently cancelled CTV series The Bridge. Producers at the TCA panel are clearly digressing from that route, touting the show as a family series revolving around police work rather than addressing the corruption within the series that’s so reminiscent of the Canadian show.
Executive producers Mitchell Burgess and Robin Green, who worked on HBO’s The Sopranos, do admit the police corruption in the Tom Selleck-Donnie Wahlberg series is an important part of the show, though.
“It’s an ongoing pursuit that will carry on all the way through,” says Green. “It’s an undercurrent.”
Like The Bridge, Blue Bloods features elements of police corruption in certain storylines, such as the kidnapping in the latter’s pilot episode. But Blue Bloods is definitely more family centric, with Selleck playing the patriarch police chief, with two sons in the force and a daughter who works as the A.D.A.
The Bridge aired on CBS's Saturday nights for three weeks before the network pulled it off the air, claiming it didn’t get the ratings it needed to justify its continuance. The scheduling and subsequent removal of the series shocked many Canadians in the industry who had heard nothing but positive reviews and remarks from the Eye, who approved all of the dailies while The Bridge was in production. According to sources, CBS was adamant the show should feel like a gritty 10 p.m. drama, and when it was announced the show would burn off on Saturday nights, it reportedly caused in-fighting at the network.
Blue Bloods debuts Friday, Sept. 24 on CTV/CBS.
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