The Heist features a comedian cop

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on March 22nd, 2006

Barry Garron, writing for the Hollywood Reporter, stretches credulity when he claims that the new NBC series The Heist utilizes…

…a tantalizingly fresh take on the genre, writer-producers Mark and Robb Cullen create a world in which the good guys, or at least the most interesting characters, are the ones who rob banks and jewelry stores. And they do it with dash, style and finesse. The outwitted detectives assigned to the case are either indifferent or just plain overmatched.

C’mon… hasn’t Hollywood been mining the anti-hero thing for about 35 years now? (So much so that it might be refreshing if the cops were the good guys!) But the trailers look interesting. And it’s notable here merely because, buried way down in the list of cast members is “Detective Billy O’Brien: Billy Gardell, a comic.

Gardell had a big role in the obscure (FX will do that) series Lucky, but this time, it’s on one of The Big Four. And, the producers (or was it the network?) gave Gardell the “punchline” on the trailer. Every trailer has a punchline. Every good trailer. Never underestimate the power of a strong performance in a trailer. It affords tons of exposure, it’s aired often, at all times, and, if it’s edited craftily, it can lend the excerpted scenes even more impact than they might have in the context of the actual episode from which they’re extracted.

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