K-Ville

Mondays at 8pm - should be interesting, but I really hope they don’t load it up with cliches. We don’t start every day off with beignets and cafe au lait, there isn’t always a pot of red beans or gumbo on, not all grocery bags have a loaf of French bread sticking out of them, we generally don’t have deep-south hick or Cajun or French accents, all local politicians are not Boss Hogg and not all NOLA cops are gun-confiscating thugs or corrupt. They’re a lot like cops in every other city - a mix of all kinds of people. And for pity’s sake, I hope they remember that it’s either New Or-lens or N’awlins, but never, never, never New Or-leens. Get it right and ca c’est bon - if not we’ll put the gris gris on you. Got it, cher (pronounced “sha”)?

Set in post-Katrina New Orleans, “K-Ville” will star Anthony Anderson (”The Shield”) and Cole Hauser (”The Cave”) as odd-couple partners on the New Orleans Police Department. Also on the force are John Carroll Lynch (”Zodiac”), Blake Shields (”Sleeper Cell”) and Tawny Cypress (”Heroes”).

… “The genesis of the project was simply that I’ve been fascinated by what’s going on in New Orleans,” Liguori said during a conference call with TV reporters on Thursday. “It’s a little bit of the Wild West down there.

“What (Lisco) really observed of the police force there is that … the NOPD is really committed to revitalizing that city.

“I think the city itself has many stories to tell. Beyond that, I have to say it is basically a cop show about two unlikely cops teamed together. Highly procedural, highly episodic.”

For Lisco, balancing the entertainment expectations of a prime-time TV audience with the raw reality of post-K New Orleans will be a challenge.

“I wanted to do a show that’s fun and high-octane and deliver all the things that we in America have come to expect from mainstream television, while at the same time having enough sensitivity and nuance to make sure we’re doing a show that was true to the special character of New Orleans and that some ways exalted the people there,” Lisco said in a separate phone interview Thursday.

“You don’t want to do a show that’s a Hallmark card to New Orleans, because then you’re not writing about real people. You want to make them flawed. If you have them too flawed, you run the risk of lapsing in the cliche of the corrupt cop in New Orleans. If you make them too good, then you’re not telling good stories. It’s a very delicate balance to make the characters seem rich and real and sympathetic, while at the same time operating in a context that is inherently depressed.