The Commish

It's tough for anything to succeed on Saturday night, and this show may be too uneven to hold up for long. But it has possibilities, so let's hope ABC sticks with it for a while.

The Commish is a conventional cop series that will rise or fall on the strength of its main character, so it may have a shot. Chiklis, a stumpy dynamo who played John Belushi in Wired, is instantly likable as Scali, an "unorthodox" police commissioner in suburban New York.

The man, and the actor, command respect, but probably will get precious little in this terrible time period. [27 Sept 1991, p.3D]

What saves The Commish (barely) is Chiklis’ nice work as a complex, plain-talking family man seeking to distance himself from his modest Brooklyn origins, plus Scali’s priceless clashes with his shiftless brother-in-law (David Paymer). These humorous skirmishes in the presence of Scali’s wife (Theresa Saldana) set an urbane comic tone for “The Commish” that makes you almost forget the program’s lapses.

Chiklis' Scali is such a happy saint that he verges on the insufferable — no one can be this generous, this clever, this jolly.

The series makes a weak slab at the Hill Street Blues mix of humor and pathos. But Chiklis is a marvel of believability, vividly creating a character who is disarming, droll, clever and compassionate.

Take a good character and put him in a lame show peopled by cliches and what you get is a waste of a good character.

The print ads for The Commish go: "Loves pasta. Sings opera. Nails scum. . . . A police commissioner you gotta love." Viewer, you don't gotta at all. The Commish and ABC should go nail themselves. [28 Sept 1991]

The Commish, which also stars Theresa Saldana as Scali's wife, and comes from Stephen J. Cannell Productions, isn't just a terrible TV show; it's practically a human rights violation.