K-Ville: Pilot

K-Ville billed itself as a "ground-breaking" drama, based on the fact that it is set in post-Katrina New Orleans. Anthony Anderson stars as Marlin Boulet, a cop who works the "Upper Ninth Ward," the area that was one of the hardest hit by the flooding. He believes passionately, perhaps more than anyone around him, that it's the citizens of New Orleans duty to fight to rebuild their city.

The premise, the intentions and some of the performances in K-Ville have promise, but the pilot works pretty hard to squander as much of that potential as possible. Where K-Ville really goes wrong is in its adherence to all of the typical cop show clichés that have come and gone over the years. Boulet's first partner, Charlie, abandoned him when the storm hit and so he doesn't play well with others. Now he gets a new partner, Trevor Cobb, played by Cole Hauser.

It's never quite clear what kind of cops Boulet and Cobb are. They were blues, but apparently do the work of detectives as well. It's typical of a sloppy cop show - the "super cop" who just kind of does it all. While this decision was employed for dramatic convenience, the result is a lot of trite, silly moments that are unintentionally funny. Boulet and Cobb work a charity function, which gets shot up - leading to a high speed chase. The next day, there's another charity function - with no increased security of any note - another shooting and your typical running with guns scene. It doesn't help that all of the action is sloppily directed and lacks and real excitement or tension. T

The real shame here is that a good cast is being wasted. Anthony Anderson proved he could hold his own with dramatic material and he has several nice moments here. Unfortunately he's not well served by a bad script filled with groan-inducing dialogue and the kind of plot that you'd expect from The A-Team, and not a 21st century drama set in post-Katrina New Orleans.

The style of the show seems to be a bad impression of NYPD Blue, using the muted colors and now-required shaky-cam that tries to evoke a fly-on-the-wall documentary style. That may have worked if Anthony Anderson didn't have to say things like "Gumbo, man. It's what I do when I need to think!" See! I know it's New Orleans because he said gumbo! The rest of the police station is barely introduced, let alone fleshed out into full characters. The woman whose murder sparks the pilot's story is supposedly someone close to Boulet, but she is also given short shrift, leaving the audience wondering what the big deal is for an entire episode.

In the past, there have been good shows that have had bad pilots. Sometimes it just takes some time for a show to find its true voice. I'm hoping that happens with K-Ville, because the cast does a decent job and there's plenty of material here. Unfortunately, as it stands, K-Ville is a sub-standard and cliched cop show that's wrapping itself in social self-importance in the hopes that nobody will notice just how bad it is.