Brother-and-sister detectives solve crimes in a quirky small town where their dad is chief of police in new procedural comedy Good Cop/Bad Cop
Television series have presented a bounty of police partners, some of them even being aliens and robots, but only rarely have they been siblings.
The recently ended Blue Bloods is a famous example of such a show, and now there’s another series about related law enforcers. The CW’s comedy-mystery Good Cop/Bad Cop casts Leighton Meester (Gossip Girl) and Luke Cook (Hacks) as an estranged sister and brother reunited — despite their vastly different personalities and processes — by their police chief father, “Big Hank” Hickman (Clancy Brown, The Penguin) to solve crimes in Eden Vale, a Pacific Northwest town that has a largely offbeat population.
Meester’s spirited Louise “Lou” Hickman isn’t above trading on her history with the locals to obtain needed information, while Cook’s tightly wound Henry Hickman has just passed his police detective exam and is much more conservative; their often-bemused and generally even-tempered dad often plays referee for them. Also portraying members of the Eden Vale police department are Scott Lee (Home and Away), William McKenna (Nowhere Boys), Shamita Siva (Single, Out) and Grace Chow (The Twelve).
Good Cop/Bad Cop takes occasional delight in referencing crime tales, with the opening robbery sequence knowingly channeling such movies as Point Break, Heat and The Town. Other TV shows also get nods, with Hank’s Russian-born consort Nadia (Blazey Best, Between Two Worlds) referencing Twin Peaks, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, CSI: Miami and “all of the Chicagos” as programs that taught her to speak English.
Despite its Washington State setting, Good Cop/Bad Cop is actually filmed in Queensland, Australia. That continent’s streaming service, Stan, is also among the major entities behind the show, with American streamer Roku heavily involved in making the series as well. That expense-sharing approach suits the current financial model of The CW; Good Cop/Bad Cop’s production company Future Shock is taking a similar approach with Murder in a Small Town, which Fox recently renewed for a second season.
Created by sitcom veteran John Quaintance (Will & Grace), who also wrote the first two episodes, Good Cop/Bad Cop had completed production on its debut season before star Meester, her fellow actor husband, Adam Brody (Nobody Wants This), and their two children lost their Pacific Palisades home in January’s Southern California wildfires. Many fans then showed their support through online sampling of Meester’s 2014 album Heartstrings, for which she wrote all of the songs.
In a recent interview with Parade, Quaintance described the show as “living somewhere between Fargo and the Knives Out movies, with the joke count and fast banter of Moonlighting.”
He added, “I wanted the show to be as funny as the sitcoms I cut my teeth on, with cases as interesting and fun as the best procedurals on television, while having the heart and romance of my favourite one-hour dramas. And this cast has delivered on every front, with compelling twisty romances and hard-earned moments of family healing and connection that are genuinely moving. I’ve never had more fun working on anything, and I think that the pure joy we all felt making this special show comes through in every episode.”
Good Cop/Bad Cop premieres Wednesday, February 19, on KTLA