Steven Bochco—who's enjoyed a successful career as a TV writer/producer alternating between gritty, acclaimed dramas like Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, and NYPD Blue, and absurdly high-concept fare like Cop Rock, Doogie Howser, M.D., and Blind Justice—has once more embraced his serious side, creating a new cop show for TNT.
Murder In the First will follow Taye Diggs and Kathleen Robertson as they take on one high-profile murder case each season. The first season, set to air next summer, is just 10 episodes long, and will find the detectives investigating a dead addict with ties to a Silicon Valley mogul. In the likely event that the show finds an audience, we fully expect Bochco to return to his first love, and pour the money and clout the show earns him into Cat And Mouse, the show about a mystery-solving Burmese you just know he's been dying to make.
And speaking of dying, TNT viewers are already enjoying more murder from a familiar source. Dick Wolf—who's spent a successful career as a TV writer/producer alternating between Law & Order and other versions of Law & Order—is currently ripping stories even more directly from the headlines* with a true crime series that premiered earlier this month. Called Cold Justice, TNT is filing the show under "reality," as it follows real-life prosecutor Kelly Siegler and crime scene investigator Yolanda McClary as they investigate unsolved murders.
It's too early to tell whether Cold Justice truly fits into TNT's lineup, which is made up entirely of shows about female detectives and shows produced by Dick Wolf. But the network says it believes the two leads have chemistry, and noted that they have actually solved real murder cases in several of the episodes. At the very least, the existence of the show prevents Steven Bochco from producing his own Cold Justice, about a seedy town in the Yukon whose criminal underbelly is policed by the Abominable Snowman.
*(Please note that the "Magical Elves" referred to in the linked article are the name of its production company, not actual magical elves who solve crimes, as seen in the show debuting from Steven Bochco in 2016.)