COPPER SEASON 2

Just watched the second episode of COPPER of the 2nd season on BBC America. Love the show. Tom Fontana, the co-creator, is one of my favorite writers. (HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREETS, SAINT ELSEWHERE, THE PHILANTHROPIST) This particular episode ended with very graphic, erotic, love scenes between the main cop, Kevin Corchoran,  a very troubled man with his emotionally damaged wife contrasted with the black doctor, headstrong, dignified but flawed Mathew Freeman and his troubled but evolving wife. We're rarely see black couples expressing love and passion on tv with it being so integral to the story line. While it was graphic (which I liked---the black folk were beautiful but very realistic looking) the scene had a very relevant emotional resonance to the story. It's a historical drama set in New York right after the Civil War. The black doctor, who is an unofficial corner, has just taken over a practice in the city and has just been insulted by a white patient after having treated the man. The doctor's wife, whose brothers were lynched by Irish thugs and is now working in a dress shop, has just met Frederick Douglass. She asks him advice on dealing with gaining her autonomy as a woman while dealing with feelings of anger about the death of her brothers. When the doctor and his wife come together they both attempt to comfort each other while expressing their anger and frustration through love-making. Great stuff! The best writing and acting these days is on television....mostly on cable.  Before I started watching this show, I assumed it was going to be a police procedural with more explicit sex and violence than you would see on regular television.  I was half right.  It is more explicit but the characters, themselves, are more challenging and brutally raw than network fare.  The story-telling is also more complex so the show is more adult in terms of sophisticated content like the best shows on HBO (like ROME and THE SOPRANOS).  The main characters of COPPER are very flawed and sometimes unlikeable in their actions but also fascinating to watch because you are never sure of what they will do next.  In the pilot from last year, Corchoran, his partner, McGuire and a couple of others chased down and killed some bandits who robbed a bank.  Just before the Uniforms arrived on the scene, the detectives helped themselves to some of the loot.  This would have never been done on "regular television."  It was shocking because I was raised on the straight-arrow cops of TV Land.  Kojak, though he speaks and acts with that Brooklyn-in-your-face style, wouldn't have laid a hand on the blood money.  He's tough but he's moral.  For the cops in the just post civil war New York, the lines are very blurred.  Killing a bad guy, taking some of his loot, screwing a hooker in a local brothel before clocking out is all in a day's work.  Wow!  These guys in COPPER seem a lot more grounded in the mean streets and gutters in real life than their mainstream network counter-parts.  Even though NYPD BLUE, HILL STREET BLUES, and my favorite, HOMICIDE had troubled guys dealing with angst, they were no where near as bold----not a regular cast member.  Regular tv is trying to be more edgy these days to compete with cable.  Some of it's good but there's a reason for pay tv.  There's a certain segment of the audience that likes a clear moral line residing in their heroes peppered with just a little angst.  Nothing wrong with that.  Just like there's part of the audience that loves the ambiguity of DEXTER even though many of them (in my humble opinion) miss the dark satiric point of it all.  It's also cool to like lighter, quirkier fare like USA's ROYAL PAINS, the slick BURN NOTICE, and the over the top PSYCH.  My hope is that we'll always have a variety of tones in programming and the band wagon trend won't ruin everything.