TV REVIEW : ABC’s ‘Cop’: It Just Doesn’t Rock

TV critics were initially enthused by “Cop Rock,” but the public has been cool to ABC’s musical-drama series -- it ranked 77th among 94 prime-time programs last week. One of The Times’ regular pop-music writers blames the rock rather than the cops.

“Cop Rock” doesn’t. Rock, that is. Instead, nearly every time the music starts, the show screeches to a halt for three minutes or so of utter banality. It’s not that you don’t want to believe cops will break into song at a moment’s notice. It’s that when they do, it becomes apparent that all these hard-boiled types were weaned on bathetic Streisand-style balladry.

Sometimes the songwriters seem to be attempting a “Jesus Christ Superstar” vibe (everyone crooked on the show reminds you of Judas and those Pharisees). More often, though, they write wounded torch ballads, making it feel like the police association’s big night out at Hollywood’s show-bizzy Cinegrill (women sing about hating themselves for loving too much).

There are occasional attempts at being “with it,” to ensure that “Cop Rock” isn’t completely out of touch with the musical times, like its incorporation of contemporary dance-pop into certain arrangements. The aesthetics seem fake, though, and the music, produced largely on synthesizers and drum machines, sounds cheap.

Their idea of what minority characters should sing resembles either “Porgy and Bess” mournful ghetto soulfulness or a suburbanite’s N.W.A. nightmare. Rap only occasionally rears its ugly head--and it is ugly, seeing how the only folks to break into raps so far are lowlife nonwhite thugs called in for questioning. As if no one on the force listens to M.C. Hammer?

The funny thing is, songs aside, it’s a frequently entertaining series. But, like a kid who hates musicals for the way the songs interrupt the horse opera, you may find yourself--no matter how much of a fan of the form you are--thinking of the cops ‘n’ robbers as sissies for breaking into sensitive ballads at inopportune moments, and wishing they’d just skip the song-and-dance and get on with the show.

Judging from focus-group results and the Nielsen ratings, the masses feel the same way about having five superfluous songs per episode that delay, rather than advance, the plot. When the ax finally falls, the public will shoulder the blame for not being open to new ideas in TV programming, but the unimaginative and crashingly dull music ought to take at least some of the credit.

It shouldn’t have to die.

“Cop Rock” is a great idea, and its pilot episode held terrific promise. Musicals often revolve around show people, for obvious reasons, but why shouldn’t these types of characters--peace officers, junkies, gang-bangers, mayors, female mud wrestlers--also have deep, rich inner lives, accessible only through the soliloquies of song lyrics?

Pop satirist Randy Newman wrote the five songs for the premiere. The show then appeared ready to try setting stylized musical numbers against the grittiness of the drama for ironic effect, a la “Pennies From Heaven” or “The Singing Detective”--as when a bored jury convicting a murder defendant becames a joyful gospel choir.

Unfortunately, Newman was uninvolved beyond the pilot. The music since has been helmed by bland TV veteran Mike Post and a crew of professional pop tunesmiths, and it sounds hurriedly and formulaically written, cheaply produced, sometimes “comic” but usually lacking a whiff of true satire.

For all the justified talk about how “daring” the controversial series is, from a pop point of view it’s strikingly stodgy and, for a show that purports to be hard-edged, powder-puffed with the softest musical sensibilities. It’s an early-’90s cop show with a treacly, early-’70s score.

Without time or inclination to institute changes, “Cop Rock” will stand in the history books as an ambitious failure, brought to you by people who fretted that incorporating music would be too daring on a conceptual level but didn’t worry enough about how daring the songs themselves should be. That irony is the sad grace note.