Renegade Review: Fox's APB

Welcome Renegade Nation it’s me Naughty Nicole and it’s time for another Renegade Review. Today, we’re going to review a guilty pleasure of mine, so I’ll fess up right from the beginning; I’m totes biased on this one. If you’ve read my book Sexual Confessional, then you already know that I have a very unhealthy and disturbing attraction to one Justin Kirk – yes, I’m fully aware that he has a strange, bird –like quality, but stop trying to understand it, just do like I do, accept it for what it is and move on. So you can imagine my glee when I found out that Mr. Kirk was going to be starring in his own new show on Fox. That’s right; my panties were all a quiver with the thought of seeing Weeds’ Uncle Andy in his glorious prime time slot. So this week, it’s all about Nicole and we’re checking out Fox’s APB. Cue the fan-girl squeeing…

Now, fox has been using the slight boost of success they saw from last year’s X-Files reboot and the mid-season hit Lucifer to hope that lighting might strike them twice. They’ve launched APB off the back of the incoming reboot of the very successful 24, and if patterns hold true, this should launch APB as strong as Lucifer. But that’s only if 24: Legacy performs as well as the X-files did. So the problem as I see it is this, Fox has spent the better part of the 2000’s trying desperately to create the next great high-conceptual procedural. Typically these shows fall short due to an over-reliance on premise over character. You know, a future world where robots are cops as much as humans, or a man brought back to life after being killed in his senior years – who can forget Almost Human and Second Chance. Both huge flops for fox: But what makes the network’s latest attempt with APB different is the nature of the shows construction .This time, the premise is merely a tool aiding an already successful formula we all know so well. The Law and Order Police procedural.