CW finds there’s life beyond Canada

Amid a sea of clever Canadians and tidy budgets, here’s a slight detour:
The CW network is adding a show that’s smart, fun and (surprisingly) American. “Good Cop/Bad Cop” (shown here) debuts at 9 p.m. Wednesday (Feb. 19), the perfect companion to the 8 p.m. “Wild Cards.”
For CW, this is part of a quick makeover. The network had been best known for slick superhero shows. It lost money, but its co-owners (Paramount and Warner Brothers) did well be then selling the same shows overseas.
Then CW was sold to people who had no interest in loss-leaders. They dumped all of the scripted shows (except “All American”), kept some unscripted ones and mostly started over.
Glance around CW now and you’ll find “All American” and game-show reruns on Mondays, wrestling on Tuesdays, true-crime on Thursdays, magicians on Friday, movies on weekends. You’ll also find lots of sports – golf and NASCAR, plus college games from the Atlantic Coast Conference and the PAC-10 … which currently consists of two teams.
But that still leaves room for scripted shows. To keep costs down, they should be ones someone else is also airing – preferably in another country.
So CW has shared shows with Germany (“The Swarm”), England (“Joan,” “Everyone Else Burns”) and, mostly, Canada, including “Son of a Critch,” “Children Ruin Everything,” “Moonshine” and “Sullivan’s Crossing.”
The best example has been “Wild Cards.” The Canadian producers already had an entertaining script about a quiet cop, reluctantly paired with a virbrant con woman. The CW then added extra money for the right stars – Giacomo Gianniotti” (Dr. DeLuca in “Grey’s Anatomy”) and Vanessa Morgan (Toni Topaz in “Riverdale”).
The first season was a delight. The second has strayed from its scam-the-scammers roots, but has still been fun. And now there’s the ideal follow-up.
Surprisingly, it’s an American show (mostly), shared with Roku.
JIn a Washington town of just under 10,000, the police chief has a terrific detective – his daughter, Lou. Now he’s adding another – her brother Henry.
Both are brilliant, but they’re also opposites: She has great people skills (except in romance); he has none.
This is a gorgeous town, where you don’t expect many murders. In the opener, one happens by accident; the bad guys are humanized. Subdequent plots involve such things as a cheapie horror film and a stolen tree prototype.
Most are clever and all are well-played. “Good Cop/Bad Cop” is filmed in beautiful parts of Queensland, in Australia. It has an Aussie company as part of the production; also, it has Aussie actors playing Henry (Luke Cook, who was Lucifer in the “Sabrina” reboot) and supporting roles.
But the other main stars are Americans – Clancy Brown as the police chief and Leighton Meester as his daughter.
In the original “Gossip Girls,” Meester was the status-obsessed Blair Waldorf. She went on to “Single Parents” and now to play the good cop.
Sandwiched between a casual dad and a tunnel-visioned brother, she manages to solve crimes, soothe pain and stumble toward romance. She also helps round out CW’s best night.