Well, it is filmed it Detroit. At least so far. I wouldn't be surprised if that changed at some time in the future; and they went to filming somewhere else with canned Detroit footage. Detroit's one of those places it nice to be from. A long way from. Detroit is probably near the top 10 of the top fifty cities in the United States. As someone who moved away 15 years ago I know of what I speak. That being said, there are other problems; for instance a murder is not a 187 in Detroit. They probably got to far into the project before they figured that out. Someone was trying to build a show in the pattern of other shows where the city was the star like NYPD Blue and most especially Homicide: Life on the Streets and The Wire. Sadly they did a direct rip off a concept from Homicide. The great Yaphet Kotto played Lt. Al Giardello the interesting black cop who was cultured and spoke Italian. So apparently that seemed like a good idea because they have a black higher ranking detective who speaks Italian and is worldly. It's really sad to see such blatant stealing of a concept. I worked in an emergency room in Detroit for several years and there lots of stories there. The producers and writers of this show just didn't bother to go to the trouble to look for those stories. And lastly Detroit has lost most of what gave it personality. Detroit is mostly abandoned homes, offices, factories, even skyscrapers. It has to be challenge for the director to find shots of the city don't look like a war zone. Baltimore has serious problems, but nothing like Detroit. I remember about 15 or 20 years ago a common bumper sticker was "Will the last person to leave Detroit please turn out the lights" I even saw a review of this show that said this is realistic. It's far from realistic 80% of homicides in Detroit are drug related, 5% random violence, 15% family killings. And 90% are black on black crime; because the city is 90% black. And this show contains the usual assortment of skinny attractive people playing cops. Not that the murder cops in Detroit are ugly; but most don't look like this bunch. They would be better served by actually looking at Detroit's crime stats there are plenty of interesting stories there. I wasn't even a cop and I've seen several incidents that would make better stories then they've come up with so far. I imagine the mayor's office makes sure no one sees the real Detroit. Detroit was once the largest bedroom community in the world. Most of those neighborhoods are now filled with vacant and burned out husks of homes, with tens of thousands of vacant lots. To sum up. While this isn't a bad show; it doesn't hold a candle to NYPD Blue, Homicide, or The Wire. I hate to think that people will watch this show and think Detroit looks like a fun place to go to---it's not, there's very little night life that's safe to take part of.
Review of Detroit 1-8-7
