In ‘24/7,’ a soft-focus investigative camera

ABC is promoting its new documentary series “NYPD 24/7” as a real-life complement to the network’s “NYPD Blue,” which has long occupied the same 10 p.m. Tuesday time slot. Yet for all its time and effort in giving an inside look at the New York Police Department, “NYPD 24/7” doesn’t tell us much that anyone who’s watched the fictional series wouldn’t already know.

In seven parts it delivers up a load of truisms: Big-city police work is tough stuff, and cops suffer from stress, cynicism and overweight. One bit of new information: Luck plays a larger part in solving crimes than TV cop dramas would have us believe.

But as for telling us anything fresh or insightful about the New York department -- its scandals, reform movements, post-9/11 trauma, history, racial tensions, rate of solving crimes, leadership or what makes it different from other police departments -- forget about it.

The filmmakers were given 16 months of unfettered access to police in various precincts on their daily rounds. Not particularly interesting for long stretches, “NYPD 24/7” shows detectives hustling mostly routine cases -- among them a robbery turned violent, a rape-murder, a custody dispute and a suicide.

“NYPD 24/7” is the work of executive producer Terence Wrong, one of television’s most acclaimed documentarians. But it lacks the journalistic heft of other “24/7” efforts that looked at urban politics and healthcare.

“NYPD 24/7” is less a documentary than a first cousin to those reality cop shows, except without the kicky, sardonic (“bad boys, bad boys”) music. The music would have helped.

The genre confusion is present from the beginning. Dennis Franz is the narrator, delivering his introductions from the set of “NYPD Blue,” dressed in Andy Sipowicz short-sleeve shirt, gun-on-his-hip garb. This from an ABC News production.

If “NYPD 24/7” has a fatal flaw, it could be its wall-to-wall hero worship. Despite Franz’s narration, the cops come across less as valiant defenders of virtue than as competent civil servants putting in a day’s work on their way to pensions.

One of the more engaging is detective Steve Di Schiavi, seen in the first segment trying to solve a vicious stabbing. Blustery and world-weary, he makes several miscalculations but keeps pushing ahead. His anger and frustration are palpable.

In segment five, newcomer Alison Esposito is candid in her appraisal of “the job” and of the social class that comprises a large percentage of the city’s victims and criminals.

“It’s a show, and we have front-row seats to the best show on Earth,” she says jauntily as the squad car rolls through the night. “They don’t want us in their lives; there’s no respect; we’re the enemy.”

Someone made a decision that the only voices in “NYPD 24/7” would be those of Franz, the cops and the people the cops encounter: suspects, “perps,” victims and witnesses. Fair enough; that’s an established cinema-verite technique.

But unresolved questions of fact and fairness keep popping up. One involves staffing levels. Every case that “NYPD 24/7” follows seems to have an abundance of officers working on it day and night. Is the department really that personnel-rich?

To have the only reference on the 1999 Amadou Diallo case -- in which officers shot 41 times at a West African immigrant who was only taking out his wallet -- come from an officer who says that of course the cops didn’t mean to kill an innocent man, falls considerably short of any journalistic mark.

In segment seven, in which police are called to maintain order during a demonstration opposing U.S. policy in Iraq, Franz tells us that some demonstrators were boiling for confrontation. Yes, but the camera seems to show cops getting in some licks without much provocation.

The camera may not lie, but it sure can use some explanation on occasion.

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‘NYPD 24/7’

Where: ABC

When: 10-11 p.m. Tuesdays. Premieres tonight.

Dennis Franz...Narrator

Executive producer, Terence Wrong. Senior executive producer, Rudy Bednar.