Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Good Cop’ On Netflix, Where Tony Danza And Josh Groban Play Father-Son Cops

The old USA Network series Monk had a lot of fans. It’s been off the air for awhile now, but the creator of that show, Andy Breckman, is back with The Good Cop, based on an Israeli-created format. Will Breckman break with his comedy/light drama roots with this show or make something the whole family can watch?

THE GOOD COP: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A plain-clothes cop goes through a shooting course, plugging his targets with precision. He finds out he’s gotten the course record from the cop in charge of the shooting range.

The Gist: That cop is Tony Caruso Jr. (Josh Groban), an NYPD lieutenant who plays by the rules so much that he doesn’t even take sugar packets from the IHOP. When we see him come home from his day on the range, we see that his father, Tony Sr. (Tony Danza) lives with him. Tony is just out of prison after being thrown in for seven years on corruption charges. Oh, yeah, Tony the elder was also a cop, except that he broke just about every rule in the book. He has no problem taking sugar packets from IHOP.

Tony Sr. is the kind of guy who’s “got a guy” for everything and he’s highly connected in Brooklyn, where Tony Jr. (who most people call T.J.) solves crimes for a special NYPD division. But he promised to his tough-as-nails parole officer Cora Vasquez (Monica Barbaro) to move in with his straight-laced son in order to keep his nose clean.

When one of the cops who testified against Tony Sr. is found brutally murdered, it’s found that the gun used was T.J.’s — the gun he never lets out of his sight unless he’s sleeping. So the wide swath of suspects is narrowed to two: Tony and T.J. Can he clear both of their names while finding the cop’s killer?

Our Take: When The Good Cop was first introduced, with Danza and Groban announced as the headliners, we thought, “wow, a gritty Netflix cop drama with Tony Danza? That sounds interesting!” But when we saw that Andy Breckman was the creator and executive producer, we knew exactly what we were going to get. And the first two episodes confirmed that guess.

That doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing. It means that what you’re going to get is what you got during the long run of Breckman’s previous show, Monk: Quirky main characters, a lot of funny situations and dialogue, intriguing case-of-the-week crimes, and an overall light tone. And we know that Breckman and his staff can execute that kind of show well, with expert casting and sharp dialogue.

We knew that Danza could pull of the role of the good guy who isn’t very virtuous in Tony Sr., but we were surprised that Groban could fill the role that’s essentially Adrian Monk. He’s believable as an NYPD detective because he’s the kind of detective who is nerdy as hell but a stickler for details and following rules. That allows him to solve crimes even though his union rep tells his captain and the IA cop investigating the murder that his partners find him to be “a big pain in the ass.”

We watched the second episode because we wanted to see the dynamic between T.J. and Tony in a regular case-of-the-week format, and it proved that this show works well — Tony is seduced by a young supermodel while T.J. and Cora try to figure out who killed a slimy guy who owned an exotic dancer business. Yes, we said Cora; she’s quickly promoted to detective and added to T.J.’s unit in episode 2 to set up the will-they-won’t-they between the two of them.

There’s also a through-line story about the hit-and-run death of T.J.’s mom and Tony’s wife, which it seems like the two Tonys will keep looking into as the season goes on. That bond helps explain why the two of them get along so well despite their differences.

Sex and Skin: You could watch this show with your grandparents, it’s so squeaky clean.

Parting Shot: We end where we pretty much began: The Caruso father and son at a broken stop light, with Tony wanting to go and T.J. wanting to stay, since blowing through the light would be wrong. Interestingly enough, we pan back to see a newspaper graphic introducing the next episode.

Sleeper Star: We love Barbaro. Love her. But this is also a good place to mention Isiah Whitlock, Jr. as the near-retirement, cynical detective Burl Loomis, and Bill Kottkamp as the spacey civilian assistant Ryan.

Most Pilot-y Line: The idea of an “All-City Homicide Squad” seems a little cumbersome. Why not do what Elementary did and set it in the Major Crimes division?

Our Call: STREAM IT. It’s funny, Groban and Danza work well together, and it won’t tax your brain like most other Netflix dramas. And that’s a pretty good thing.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Watch The Good Cop on Netflix