Television review: ‘The Chicago Code’

“The Chicago Code” is almost precisely what you would expect from a cop drama created by Shawn Ryan for network television. And that is meant to be read with a sense of cautious celebration rather than cynical resignation. Ryan is the creator of “The Shield,” which helped put FX on the map and remind viewers that a cop show does not have to be a procedural, that it could be just as much about character as crime, and that those characters could exist in the gloaming between good and evil.

“Chicago Code,” premiering Monday on Fox, prefers its sunlight direct and throws a few accent walls to brighten the shades of gray, but like “The Shield” it is a cop drama rather than a cop show, exploring the nature of political and personal corruption instead of presenting a nifty case to solve each week.

Accent wall No. 1 is Jennifer Beals, who plays Teresa Colvin, Chicago’s youngest and first female police superintendent. As a girl, Teresa watched her father lose his business and marriage to the city’s culture of payola and she’s determined to put a stop to it, even if it means locking horns with the man who helped promote her. That would be Alderman Ronin Gibbons (Delroy Lindo), the smooth-talkin’, expensive-suit-wearin’ politico who thought he could control Teresa just like he seems to control everything but the weather in the Windy City.

But Gibbons has another thing coming; denied a formal task force on corruption, Teresa creates an informal one — her former partner, the legendary Jarek Wysocki (Jason Clarke). Jarek is first seen in a high-speed chase saving the life of a gun-waving perp by persuading him to turn himself in if Jarek will let him kiss his girlfriend goodbye. Which he does, because Jarek Wysocki is a Man of His Word. With his new callow and barely tolerated partner, Caleb Evers (Matt Lauria), Jarek eventually answers Teresa’s plea to help her clean up this city once and for all.

If on paper this all seems very superhero serial, it doesn’t play that way on screen. Beals in the big police hat takes some getting used to — she’s a bit shiny for a show that’s going to get all slaughterhouse and Irish gang. But her Chicago accent is no worse than some Southern accents we could name. And in the second and third episodes especially, she projects a very believable mixture of energetic fury and exhaustion and delivers her lines with the appealing rat-a-tat delivery of a ‘40s movie heroine.

She also has great chemistry with Clarke, who was so consistently terrific on Showtime’s “Brotherhood” and promises to be just as interesting to watch here. Although hampered by a few more scripted quirks than necessary — Wysocki has a 27-year-old girlfriend but is still hot for his ex-wife; Wysocki can’t abide profanity and has a thing for Audrey Hepburn — Clarke instantly creates a man of integrity and humility, the old-fashioned copper who knows when to throw a punch and when to leave a guy alone with his bottle. Close at his heels is Lauria’s Evers, the bright and talented boy trying to learn how to be a man

Acting as foil to all this moral fortitude is Gibbons. And Lindo makes a meal of the character, with extra helpings and sauce on the side. He is just so bad but so believably bad, self-righteous and self-involved, convinced that he is doing what’s best for the city, and if it means a little more for him then so be it.

With no procedural element in sight, no case of the week or special guest stars, “The Chicago Code” becomes a drama of cat and mouse as Teresa and Jarek try to outsmart the alderman without having to become like him. A structure like that can be difficult to sustain, but it’s territory Ryan knows well. Throw in Wysocki’s rookie niece, some intra-force rivalry, those great Chicago locations and a Polish sausage or two, and you have a show that breaks the network code, and that alone is worth watching.

mary.mcnamara@latimes.com