NBC's 'Line of Fire' is what happens when you combine a procedural TV show with a soap opera
NEW YORK (AP) — If you like crime procedurals, TV creator Joshua Safran suggests you catch the new NBC show “Line of Fire.” If you're more of a soap opera person, Safran urges you watch the new NBC show “Line of Fire.”
The hybrid series features a family of law enforcement officers — one an FBI agent, one a U.S. marshal, two in the Secret Service and one in the Department of Justice — whose work and home life overlap dramatically.
It sounds like what you get when “Quantico” is mixed with “Gossip Girl” and that's not too far from what Safran has concocted. He worked on both those series and has channeled them into a heady network mix. Plus, he's added a little French farce.
“You’re going to watch a case unfold every week by very capable people who are in an area or areas of law enforcement that you may have seen before, but you’re also going to go home with them and see how they take that work home with them, how it impacts their family life, how it impacts their relationships,” he says.
“Line of Fire,” debuting Monday, stars Peter Krause and Hope Davis as the on-again, off-again couple at the heart of the high-achieving, slightly dysfunctional Hollingsworth family.
The fundamentals are not dissimilar to CBS's long-running series “Blue Bloods,” about a multi-generational family of New York City cops and their assistant district attorney sister. But while the fictional Reagan family would do seemingly anything for one another, one of the Hollingsworth family's three children describes them as “a family full of people who will stop at nothing to protect literal strangers but are unable to stop hurting each other.”
An early scene in the pilot episodes shows mom demanding that her daughter introduce the family to her new boyfriend — while both women stand over a fresh crime scene with two corpses.
“I think it’s really hard these days to set boundaries, even when we do set aside time," says Safran. "If you’re out with your partner, or you’re out with friends, the conversation really often tends to center around work because we’ve lost the art of going out and seeing where the night takes you or where the day takes you.”
Each week will have its own case — pulling in two or more family members — while there are also long-term arcs, like questions around an old assassination attempt on the president and which killer is leaving little origami cranes at crime scenes. By the end of the first show, a deadly conspiracy is revealed that will echo throughout the series.
Unfortunately for them, this family is destined to be in each other's faces. “It’s a family business,” says the mom to one of her sons during a tense moment. “If you didn’t want to join it, you could have gone to art school.”
After his beloved fire captain Bobby Nash was killed last year in a shocking twist on ABC's “9-1-1,” Krause was lured back to the small screen by Safran's scripts.
The “Parenthood,” “Sports Night” and “Six Feet Under” alum says he wasn't thinking about doing another network show but, as his credits suggest, he enjoys being part of a TV family. This time, there was a lot of family intrigue.
“The fun of it for me is the concealment, that within their jobs they have to conceal things from each other and sometimes they don’t," says Krause. "Sometimes they’ll cross a line to share information with each other, which is fun.”
The cast also includes Kat Cunning, Tommy O’Brien and Taylor Bloom as the three Hollingsworth children. Guest stars include Sam Waterston, Campbell Scott and Chris Chalk.
Safran says that while he was writing the family dynamic, he was inspired by the song “Stay” by Samantha Barks, with the lyric “Don’t come too close and don’t go too far.”
One of the show's champions is someone who spent a lot of time under Secret Service protection — Jenna Bush Hager, co-host of “Today” and daughter of former President George W. Bush. Hager is an executive producer.
“She’s really been an invaluable resource. She’s talked to the writers, she’s come to set,” says Safran. “She’s just so positive and her energy is so infectious and great.”
Hager helped Safran pick what became “Line of Fire” from a number of ideas he was kicking around. He says he's always been interested in procedurals but forever wondered about the characters' nonwork life.
“You don’t see their home lives and I really wanted to explore that. When you watch the ‘Chicago’ shows or the ‘Law & Order’ universe, at least for me, I’m digging for pieces and clues about the characters behind their job,” he says.
Safran also gets to explore ways the work-life divide can get messed up, like how the Hollingsworth's mother is someone who is suspicious of everyone — good for tracking down fugitives — but that isn't very helpful when meeting her kids' new friends.
“It goes both ways,” he says. “We bring home to work, but we bring work to home in the worst ways, too.”
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