Appealing ‘Big Apple’ Has a Taste for Volatility, Intrigue

Prime time needs another New York crime show like it does another tribe of “Survivor” opportunists playing to the camera. Which makes the soaring appeal of “Big Apple” all the more noteworthy, its arrival on CBS introducing a series from David Milch (“NYPD Blue”) and Anthony Yerkovich (“Miami Vice”) whose glossy but magnetic characters converge in an incestuous tangle of law enforcement.

Woven through the premiere is a corps of good actors in an hour of densely plotted intrigue and inky noir that everyone should want to watch in a New York minute, even though the competition includes NBC’s brawny “ER.”

A gorgeous woman’s body is found in a swanky penthouse, and at odds over the case initially are the NYPD and the FBI, with Ed O’Neill the shortest fuse in this tinderbox of clashing agendas as volatile Det. Mike Mooney, who deeply resents the arrogant feds.

That O’Neill slips so persuasively into the role of this rhinestone in the rough speaks well of his talent and versatility after years of being the coarsest of the Bundys in Fox’s “Married . . . With Children.”

Dialogue is sometimes raw here, too, from a snide crack about J. Edgar Hoover’s reported sexuality to Mooney telling FBI hotshot Jimmy Flynn (Titus Welliver) to “kiss my underpaid Irish ass.” Mooney barks that when Flynn orders him and his young partner, Vincent Trout (Jeffrey Pierce), to lay off the murder case because they’re interfering with a federal undercover operation at a strip club controlled by Russian mobsters.

Is Mooney intimidated? Get serious. Yet the two New York cops later will join the FBI effort, Mooney reluctantly, the callow Trout happily after being awed by the view from the 22nd floor and other perks that come with being a fed: “It’s a career boost, Mike. Our own cars, ones we can drive home.”

Flynn’s tactics may be questionable, meanwhile, in a milieu where even some of the supposed good guys seem to bend or operate on the edge of the law. And the show’s patina of ambiguity also extends to Flynn’s boss, William Preecher (David Strathairn), and Terry Maddock (Michael Madsen), Flynn’s shady, bar-owning informant with a violent nature. The hour would be much less interesting without this dark side.

Not everything here fits, including a noisy daylight murder, out in the open, that defies credibility. Otherwise, “Big Apple” is the kind of series that invites swift addiction.

* “Big Apple” premieres tonight at 10 on CBS. The network has rated it TV-14-DLV (may be unsuitable for children younger than 14 with special advisories for suggestive dialogue, coarse language and violence).