Golden Boy

The cast is engaging, the premise is intriguing and the genre long has been CBS' ratings-rich specialty.

Happily, Golden Boy not only manages a fairly original take on cop shows but actually turns out to be surprisingly intriguing.

It's a solid, meat-and-potatoes police procedural, and one that could potentially evolve into more depending on how the flash-forwards are used down the road.

The scripts offer a well-balanced mix of office politics, underlying mystery and weekly cop procedural. And the first-rate cast ties it all together with abundant skill.

Golden Boy works as a decent cop show. But an epic one? Not yet.

The cases themselves are nothing new--indeed, it's all pretty standard procedural stuff, with the only extracurricular detour involving Clark's young sister (Stella Maeve), who he looks after. Yet the device of the flashbacks offers a nifty kicker, teasing at things to come--like why the older Clark walks with a pronounced limp. Ultimately, the series benefits enormously from the interplay between James and McBride.

In its best moments, the drama has the grit of something more likely to be found on cable channel TNT.

We know how this ends (he becomes commish) but there's little evidence suggesting how or why that happens, and even less reason why we should care. Meanwhile, the best stuff in Golden Boy is the little stuff--sharp, brittle dialogue, nice performances and a street cred that's a cut above average.

To say this ground was covered better on The Wire is both an understatement and unnecessary--although the setup has promise. [1 Mar 2013, p.62]

Somebody tell the creators of shows like this, please, that viewers want engaging characters and entertaining, absorbing storytelling. We really don't need to be whooshing around in time while our heads spin.

If yet one more cop show about the brash young rookie and the older, tired guy thisclose to retirement is enough to make you go completely insane and start watching, say, “Smash” or something equally upsetting, then for sure you want to stay away from Golden Boy. However, if you love cop shows that aren’t really procedurals so much as stories about the internal politicking of the NYPD, than maybe Golden Boy is just what you’re looking for.

It's a terrific idea. But it doesn't quite measure up to its potential.

The show, from Greg Berlanti and Nicolas Wootton, does a good job of making Clark both appealing and overly ambitious.... What doesn’t work at all in the first two episodes of Golden Boy is the more familiar procedural material.

We quickly care what happens to these characters, which gets any show off to a strong start. Just as quickly, though, the time-jumping makes the story feel more complicated than it needs to.

Golden Boy’s half-bakedness--part totally competent TV show, part lazily executed one--permeates throughout.

An ambitious character-driven drama over-enamored from the get-go with its tricky structure and coy premise.

Nicholas Wootton's uniformly by-the-book series quickly eradicates itself of any authentic tension by unwisely depicting its hero alive and well (despite a slight limp that has yet to be thoroughly explained) seven years in the future.

It’s just another police procedural pretending to be something bigger, and I don’t feel all that compelled to stick around and watch this golden boy grow up.

Golden Boy is a smoothly made but entirely generic show that rides the squad-room-as-family metaphor hard.

Golden Boy is a passable new cop show from CBS that relies on a flash-forward gimmick to set it apart from other TV cop shows.

Beyond the pilot, though, it appears to be a blandly generic precinct drama. [5 Mar 2013]