Undercover Work Gets Uncovered in ‘Falcone’

It was the reality of the scripts that drew Jason Gedrick to “Falcone,” CBS’ new drama series that follows his character, FBI agent Joseph D. Pistone, into the world of the Mafia as Joe Falcone. In hopes that that same reality will also hook viewers, the network is stripping the series across eight nights starting with back-to-back episodes tonight at 9.

Based on the real Pistone’s 1990 book, “Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia,” which was first turned into the 1997 movie with Johnny Depp in the title role, the show explores life inside New York’s Volonte crime family. Posing as an ambitious mobster, Falcone becomes part of Sonny Napoli’s Brooklyn mob crew. The foundation for “Falcone’s” plots, according to Gedrick, is built on “tapes and transcripts from actual life” that help the producers re-create real events.

Anchoring the series is Falcone, whom Gedrick imbues with a steely, dark intensity. He is pulled between loyalties to his family, to his obsession with making the case against the mob, and to the members of the mob itself, who become, in that strange nether world of an undercover agent’s life, friends.

“I was inspired by a man who would stick so strongly to his belief system,” Gedrick said. “It wasn’t just a job; it was the principle.”

It is in dealing with his family, though, that the texture of the man behind Falcone emerges. Gedrick found at his core, “here’s a guy with great depth.”

Much of the tension in “Falcone,” in fact, comes as Falcone and his wife, Maggie, played by Amy Carlson, and his two daughters, portrayed by Delanie Fitzpatrick and Sarah Hyland, deal with the separation and the secrecy that are fundamental to his job.

For Titus Welliver, who portrays new Mafia boss Sonny Napoli, the series represented a shift to the other side of the law. Welliver is more often playing a cop, as he has in such dramas as “Brooklyn South.”

In Sonny, Welliver saw a “character at the other end of the spectrum.” And though he orders more than a few murders, Welliver doesn’t see Sonny as simply a “bad guy.”

“He’s an honorable guy in a completely dishonorable profession,” Welliver said. “The interesting thing about this guy is he has a lot of problems that everyone else has. [He’s] multifaceted with pathos.”

In building an ensemble cast, chemistry is always important. It is a balancing act to keep Gedrick’s character skirting around the edges of being completely accepted by the mob. So casting the guys surrounding Sonny was critical, according to executive producer Bob Singer.

When they brought them together--Welliver; Sonny Marinelli, who plays Jimmy Suits; and Lillo Brancato Jr., who plays Lucky--everything clicked. They had a “familiarity as if they had grown up together, while Jason [Gedrick] seemed like an outsider,” Singer said.

“Falcone” was originally targeted for CBS’ fall schedule, but network President Leslie Moonves pulled it out of contention in the wake of the shootings at Colorado’s Columbine High School last spring.

“We screened the show’s pilot before an audience two days after the Columbine incident, and realized airing the series at that time just didn’t feel right,” said CBS senior vice president of scheduling and programming, Kelly Kahl.

Still, executive producer Mark Johnson contends that while “Falcone” does have its share of violence, many of the themes running through the series are not.

“The show was never about violence, it’s about the conflict in one man,” Johnson said.

The core writing team behind “Falcone” is Bobby Moresco, co-producer of the former Fox series “Millennium,” and executive producer Ken Solarz, who wrote and produced the film “City of Industry” and recently worked with the NBC series “Profiler.” The pair wrote the show’s pilot.

As to the network’s decision to play the series over eight days, it is a “television programming strategy that is evolving,” Kahl said. “CBS for the past three or four years has had good midseason urban crime-driven shows like ‘Turks’ or ‘Feds,’ but they came and went without drawing enough attention. So, we wanted to try something new.”

If “Falcone” does generate an audience, the network is likely to find a permanent spot for the series on its fall schedule.

*

* The first two episodes of “Falcone” can be seen tonight at 9 and 10, respectively, on CBS. The network has rated it TV-14-LV (may be unsuitable for children younger than 14 with special advisories for coarse language and violence).