TV REVIEWS : Rebel Female Cop Goes on a Rampage

The biggest change in police shows has been the emergence of the female cop. Normally, they’re tough, cool and drop-dead good-looking. That’s true of Amanda Donohoe’s veteran police officer in “It’s Nothing Personal” (at 9 tonight on NBC, Channels 4, 36 and 39). What’s different about her is that she’s also a touch crazed, a rebel and malcontent who never goes by the book--a borderline female Dirty Harry.

In a TV movie that could serve as a pilot for a series, Donohoe (“L.A. Law”), wiry and feral, is a dark, troubled case, a woman who tries to bury the pain of her brother’s murder by going after every bad guy with a vengeance that verges on the personal.

There’s a sexual charge to her character, which is spelled out in an erotic opening scene in which she sexually ravages and exploits a much younger man in an effort to expiate her demons. Of course, nothing works for her--not booze, not her mom (a rare appearance by Claire Bloom), not the entreaties of her only friend in the LAPD (the spirited S. Epatha Merkerson), who’s the only character not scared of her.

The movie begins to lighten up when Donohoe’s cop, faced with suspension and more sessions with the division shrink, resigns and joins up with a crusty bounty hunter with a weak ticker who lives in one of those flavorful Topanga Canyon houses (Bruce Dern in one of his characteristically perverse turns).

Well directed by Bradford May from a promising script by Lee Rose, this is not really an action thriller at all but rather a character study. The action and the plot, refreshingly enough, are byproducts, always secondary and incidental to the inner drama--the obsession and catharsis of a female officer on the street.