'Big Apple' is good enough to take 'ER'

Rest in peace, Must See TV? NBC's longtime stranglehold on Thursday-night audiences may loosen even further tonight with the debut of Big Apple on CBS -- a tense, thoughtful and admittedly violent cop drama that might actually have the stuff to take on ER.

Or not.

But let's face it, ER lately has been reduced to drilling holes in Mark Green's head while awaiting the sure-to-be premature birth of his child with Elizabeth Corday. And this differs from General Hospital how?

Meanwhile, Big Apple comes stomping in following Survivor and C.S.I. with a superb cast, a different approach and the most charismatic bad guy-good guy since Andy Sipowicz.

Produced by class acts David Milch (NYPD Blue) and Anthony Yerkovich (Miami Vice), Big Apple works off the tensions between two very different varieties of cop.

Ed O'Neill plays veteran NYPD detective Mike Mooney, who, with his younger partner, Vincent Trout (Jeffrey Pierce), is investigating the gruesome murder of a stripper in a posh New York pad. Unfortunately, the murder ties into some very complicated concerns of the seemingly straitlaced FBI, led by William Preecher (David Straithairn) and Jimmy Flynn (Titus Welliver).

Those concerns also involve Terry Maddock (Michael Madsen), a bar owner in Hell's Kitchen whom the FBI counts on as an informant but who may very well be running them. The cops seem to be intermittently unethical, but as a brief encounter with the Russian Mafia shows, Maddock may not even have a soul.

Teamed with Donnie Wahlberg as street punk Chris Scott, Madsen -- probably best known for his ear-slicing dance in Reservoir Dogs -- makes this show purr, hiss and growl, and if the viewer isn't quite sure what he's up to yet, neither are the cops.

Big Apple has the look of a big winner, but it's being put in the toughest slot on television. Whether it cuts into the surgical ratings fest over on NBC or not, there has to be a place on TV for a show this good.