On call, the gritty new half-hour drama that follows police officers on patrol in Long Beach, California, is very different from other cop shows. For starters, Lori Loughlin is in it.
As the battle-hardened leader of the station, we see her character, Lt. Bishop, rarely cracks a smile – a sharp contrast to her most famous role as the sweet Aunt Becky Full house. It is also her first TV role since her involvement in the college admissions scandal, which left her in jail for two months.
Loughlin told Yahoo Entertainment that she only had to hear “two words: Dick Wolf” to say, “I’m in!” for the project, which will stream on Prime Video from January 9, is the latest series from the mega-producer, who is also responsible for the powerhouse Law and order And FBI franchises.
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“I was so flattered to be offered a role that is so different from the other roles I’ve played,” Loughlin said. “To play that strong woman, who is so driven – wearing a uniform, hair back, brown hair, dark hair, no make-up – was really refreshing.”
Eriq La Salle, who also stars and directs a number of episodes On call, forced Loughlin to find the ‘harder side’ of her character.
“He was there to help me develop Bishop and pushed me to discover the stronger, stoic, tougher side of her,” Loughlin said.
Troian Bellasario and Brandon Larracuente in ‘On Call’. (Amazon MGM Studios)
She wasn’t the only actress who played against type in the series. Troian Bellasario stars as Traci Harmon, a training officer dealing with grief while taking on a new trainee, played by Brandon Larracuente.
Bellasario is best known for her role as a high school student who investigates the disappearance of her friend Pretty little liars. Playing Harmon is “very different,” Bellasario told Yahoo Entertainment.
“[On Pretty Little Liars]I was in my early 20s playing a high school student… It was great to get this role who was actually a little older than me,” the 39-year-old said. “Traci has been in this position for 12 years, she is in a position of authority and she has worked hard to get here. She is a mentor. There were so many elements of her that I was super excited to play.
Troian Bellasario in Call. (Amazon MGM Studios)
Larracuente said his wife grew up watching Pretty little liarsand when she looked On call, she couldn’t believe that both of Bellasario’s characters were played by the same person.
“It’s all a testament to her hard work and research,” he added. “She’s a total badass.”
Call isn’t just a departure from typical roles for its stars. It’s also an outlier for the police procedural genre.
Much of the footage in the show comes from bodycams and dashcams, just like for real cops. Actor and director La Salle told Yahoo Entertainment that it has “more of a documentary style.”
Brandon Larracuente in On call. (Amazon MGM Studios)
“We’ve all ridden along with real police officers … to be the fly on the wall, and discover that this is what it’s like to sit in a car for eight hours – sometimes longer for police officers working double shifts – without knowing what kind of call you’re going to get,” he said. “We’ve literally done all these things, and some of them could end up being tragic.”
Tim Walsh co-created the show with Dick Wolf’s son, Elliot Wolf. He said they had made “dozens” of trips. Actors, directors and some producers did this too.
“I don’t think you should be able to write a police officer or play a police officer if you don’t know what they’re going through,” Walsh told Yahoo Entertainment. “You have to understand what you are doing, what you are doing, what the world is that you are in. You can’t make that up.”
According to Walsh, the series isn’t even technically a “procedural,” the format most cop shows adopt.
“We don’t start with a crime and then solve it at the end of the episode,” he said. “We don’t have a formula. We just want to capture a day in the life of someone with boots on the ground, with police officers in and out of patrol cars.”
“We never go home with them. That is also unique,” he added.
Bellasario said the show is more about spending time with the show’s characters — seeing them at work and in the community — than anything else.
“It immediately puts you in our place. Wherever we ride, you are with us,” she said. “It’s one of those shows where you have to sit towards the front and not towards the back.”
All eight episodes of Call start streaming on Prime Video on January 9.
