Shades of Blue: Jennifer Lopez stars with crooked cops and comrades

This classy new cop drama has a hard-boiled edge rarely seen on network TV.

Jennifer Lopez as Detective Harlee Santos in Shades of Blue.

This classy new cop drama from NBC is created and written by Adi Hasak (Generation Kill), with the first two episodes directed by Barry Levinson (Homicide). It has a hard-boiled edge rarely seen on network TV and a noirish moral ambiguity sets it apart from the usual procedurals.

It stars international superstar Jennifer Lopez, who not only looks as glamorous as you might expect but is thoroughly convincing as tough-talking (“I don’t do banter”) Harlee Santos. She is a bent Brooklyn cop who works in the 64th precinct — led by Matt Wozniak (Ray Liotta) — and who unwillingly becomes an FBI informant when she’s busted by the Anti-Corruption Task Force, made to rat on her comrades.

Her tightly knit crew offers security to local businesses and resident crims in exchange for a fee, offering occasional reprehensible activities when required.

“It’s all about the neighbourhood,” Wozniak likes to say. “It’s all about protection and serving the greater good.”

At a time when the US police system is under intense scrutiny, the idea of cops believing the ends justify the means has topical relevance. Santos is a devout believer in the family of police, corrupt or not — her justification is her cello-playing teenage daughter’s school tuition fees, which, of course, she’s always struggling to find.

“And that’s how this works,” she tells her rookie partner, who is falling apart morally after her cover-up of a drug dealer’s murder, a cop shooting gone wrong. Much of the tension comes from watching her wangle her way out of the tricky, sometimes deadly, situations where her betrayal is about to be revealed. If you loved The Shield you’ll enjoy this, too.

Shades of Blue, Tuesday, 8.30pm, Universal (112)

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When this funny, fiercely competitive blind-auction show caught on in the US it became a television sensation. And this British version, premiering tonight, has also been phenomenally successful. Part game show and part treasure hunt, the show involves competitors bidding on abandoned storage lockups in nondescript parts of the country. Created by comedian and former second-hand retailer Sean Kelly, the fly-on-the wall series follows the fast-talking auctioneer as he sells off the mystery contents of storage units. Many people use these facilities to house some of their most treasured belongings. But those who fail to pay the rent for 32 days are in for a nasty shock: the owners are permitted to cut the lock on their unit and sell all their possessions to the highest bidder. Kelly calls it a “carnival” as the show takes us into a winner-takes-all world, where the often abrasive competitors have a shot at making a quick profit. In past shows, hunters have found a methamphetamine lab and new Harley-Davidson motorcycles, among other things.

Picasso & Braque Go to the Movies

Tuesday, 6.30pm, Foxtel Arts (133)

Martin Scorsese narrates a documentary exploring cinema’s influence on cubist painters Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, and how it fuelled their fascination with time, space and motion. It celebrates the way movies became a crucial and formative influence on modern painting, especially cubism. “Cubism was not a style,” Scorsese says in the film. “It was a revolution that instigated a profoundly radical change of form — in fact a radical change of vision itself.” Produced by Scorsese and Robert Greenhut and directed by Arne Glimcher, the film features artists Chuck Close, Julian Schnabel and Eric Fischl, along with video performance artist Robert Whitman. They consider the thematic and artistic parallels that can be drawn between Picasso and Braque’s works and early 20th-century films by the likes of Georges Melies and the Pathe brothers. In a lovely sequence, film historian Jennifer Wild examines early cinema in relation to other turn-of-the-century entertainments such as the circus and burlesque and the way it began to replace live acts; the footage alone is worth the price of admission. Scorsese’s film also points to cinema’s continuing influence on the art of our time.

PAY-TV FILMS

A classy drug cartel thriller from director Denis Villeneuve, Sicario (Saturday, 8.30pm, Premiere) sees idealistic FBI agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) receive a dubious assignment after rising through the ranks of her male-dominated profession. Recruited by mysterious government official Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), Kate joins a taskforce for the escalating war against drugs led by the intense and shadowy Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro). Sicario is the Spanish word for “hit man” and Del Toro’s performance is electrifying.

Salon Kitty (Saturday, 8.30pm, World Movies) is a cult classic starring the great Helmut Berger and the equally stellar Ingrid Thulin. The 1976 erotic drama, directed by Tinto Brass, covers the real-life activities of a high-class Berlin brothel used by German intelligence services during World War II for espionage purposes.

Far more joyous is Gurinder Chadha’s Bend It Like Beckham (Sunday, 6.35pm, Romance). The smash-hit comedy-drama follows Jess (Parminder Nagra), the daughter of a strict Indian couple (Anupam Kher, Shaheen Khan), who is forbidden from playing club soccer in London. It also stars Keira Knightley, Archie Panjabi and Jonathan Rhys Meyers.