Family Is the Real Beat of Drama About Chicago Police

It is a scene without words and lasting but a moment, yet it sets the stage for “Turks,” a new drama series on CBS debuting Thursday night at 9 about a family of Chicago cops: In the golden glow of morning, Sgt. Joseph Turk, played by William Devane, reaches out to his wife in bed. He slides the spaghetti strap of her nightgown down and kisses her neck and shoulder. She turns away, as if asleep. Resigned, he gets up, scratches the dog and leaves the room. Suddenly Mary Turk (Helen Carey) opens her eyes.

As Robert Singer, creator and executive producer of the series, wrote in the pilot script, they are “sad eyes.”

This is one of the pivotal scenes that, Singer said, was running through his head long before he started writing, even before his characters had fully taken shape. “[It was] the idea of a man in his 50s, trying to be amorous with his wife of a similar age,” Singer said, “and getting rejected.”

Though the backdrop is cops--two of the three Turk sons in this Irish Catholic family are also cops; the youngest is in college, and in trouble with the law--”Turks” is really about family and the tangled emotional relationships that go with it.

In his office at Universal, Singer--50ish, short and solid, with the kind of rugged looks and voice befitting a private eye--said he wanted to do a drama about street cops several years ago and was seeking a new way to do that when CBS President Leslie Moonves put it on the back burner. Steven Bochco’s series, “Brooklyn South,” was going on CBS and the network didn’t want similar shows.

“So [the idea] sort of germinated,” Singer said, “this notion of putting a family at the core. . . . They’re the most interesting relationships, the most complicated, the most intense--other than a great love affair.”

Singer has created a visually rich, bagpipe-sounding, generational saga with layered characters--they have integrity and they have flaws. But family, both in the abstract and concrete, is what matters most to the Turks, even to Devane’s character, the family patriarch, who will eventually have an affair.

“No matter how much they get angry with each other, they love each other ferociously,” Singer said. “This family will not be torn asunder.”

After nearly three decades in television as executive producer of such series as “Midnight Caller” and “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman” and as creator of “Reasonable Doubts” and “Charlie Grace,” Singer is finally getting to explore family in the way he wants. “It’s something that is really close to my heart,” he said, “that I can really invest myself in emotionally.”

Moonves has known Singer since the ‘70s and brought him onto “Midnight Caller” while at Lorimar and later worked with him at Warner Bros. In “Turks,” Moonves said, he believes he has a drama that will help him continue to shift the CBS audience in a different direction--younger and more male.

“It’s very emotional, about fathers and sons, husbands and wives. . . . So it should have the terrific female appeal as well as having the action elements of a great police drama,” Moonves said. The casting of Devane gave CBS the legacy of an established CBS star from “Knots Landing.” “Plus we got an amazing group of young, terrific actors,” Moonves added, “starting with David Cubitt, who we think is the next breakout television star.”

Cubitt, who played the troubled brother on CBS’ “Michael Hayes” last season, is Mike Turk, the eldest son, a workaholic struggling in the shadow of his father, sometimes at the expense of wife Erin (Sarah Trigger) and son Mark (Adam Tanguay).

Joey Jr. (Matthew John Armstrong), who sees everything in black and white, is the middle son. Paul (Michael Muhney) is the youngest; though innately smarter than his brothers, he has a gambling habit that enmeshes him with criminals. In a key scene that Singer said helped him plot the story, a fight erupts in the kitchen after Joey sees Paul driving a getaway van. “It was a signpost for me, how one brother might be incredibly disappointed in another.”

At the center, of course, is the father. “I begin with a guy who is excellent at his job, who’s admired in his job, but he’s flawed in his personal life,” Singer said. “It’s easier for him to lead men and women in a work situation than it is for him to totally sort out what’s going on in his own house.”

Mary Turk, meanwhile, has long since found solace in the church. For years, she has faced the possibility that her husband or her sons might be hurt, or worse, on the job.

“It puts everything a little bit more on edge,” Singer said.

Devane Calls It a ‘Great Role’

That bedroom scene was no fluke. Husband and wife are simply unable to communicate. Enter Ginny (Ashley Crow), intelligent and compassionate, hostess at Emmit’s, the precinct bar. She’s also a sculptress.

“I wanted the marriage to be in trouble,” Singer said, “but I didn’t want the audience to think this is a philandering guy. . . . At the top of the third episode, he says, ‘Look, I’m a guy who’s married 31 years. I never looked at another woman, and I got to go back a couple of decades since I’ve thought another woman looked at me. And there you are, and the hairs on the back of my neck are standing up.’ ”

Devane said he and Singer, longtime friends and golfing buddies, discussed the role even before Singer started to write.

“We had talked about doing something for years,” Devane said. “For me, it’s a great role because it’s about family. I have two sons, I’ve been married for 35 years, I’m in a rocky place right now. So I have a lot to bring to this role.”

The role appealed to Devane, a chauffeur’s son who grew up in Albany, N.Y., also because of its working-class roots, which represented a welcome change from the characters he often plays: the Kennedys, lawyers and politicians.

In a sense, the genesis of “Turks” was Singer’s own boyhood in Nyack, N.Y. The younger son of a men’s clothing store owner, he was one of the few Jewish kids in a predominantly blue-collar Catholic town. He said his own parents were incredibly close but he remembers certain of his friends and how their families were troubled but did not dissolve.

“You’d look on the mantel and see a faded wedding picture, people looking adoringly in each other’s eyes, and it’s the happiest day of their lives,” Singer said. “And you say, ‘What the hell happened?’ ”

As cinematographer, Singer chose Shelly Johnson, a longtime collaborator. “Our first idea was to not do a muted color look that you’ve seen in a lot of police shows,” Johnson said, “[but] to bring a lot of color into it and almost make it hyper-realistic. I thought we could use time of day to advantage in the personal side, setting scenes at sunset or sunrise. Bring in some warmth and contrast that with cooler tones as they go out on their police calls. A lot of the light was influenced by a film noir type of aesthetic. A lot of strong slashes, patterned light. . . .”

For Singer, who has a 20-year-old daughter and “a significant other of many years,” writing “Turks” was a release.

“I lost my dad a year ago; he was 88, and I probably got some stuff out that had to do with me and him,” Singer said. “I have a brother. We fought. You have expectations of a brother, he has expectations of you. . . . My ex-wife said to me one time, ‘The things that you wouldn’t say at home, you have no problem saying in a script.’ ”

Was she right? Singer said with a laugh: “Yeah, that was pretty right on the nose.”

* “Turks” airs on CBS on Thursdays at 9 p.m. The network has rated it TV-PGLV (may be unsuitable for children under 14, with advisories for coarse language and violence).