Edmonton Journal

Lopez returns to cop drama

- MELISSA HANK

Jennifer Lopez is feeling Blue. But that’s a good thing. The singeractr­ess debuts the second season of her NBC/Global police drama Shades of Blue tonight and, she says, the return is explosive.

“It starts off with a bang,” she recently told Extra. “It ended with a bang and it starts off with a slow, crazy bang.”

The season premiere resumes moments after Lopez’s character, dirty cop and single mom Harlee Santos, kills the abusive father of her child in self-defence.

Titled Unforgiven, the episode sees Harlee go to extreme measures to cover up her ex’s death. So extreme, in fact, that one scene with the corpse had Lopez’s stomach twisting and turning almost as much as she did as a Fly Girl on In Living Color back in the day.

“I felt sick when I first read that burial scene,” she told TV Insider. “All I could think was, ‘I can’t do this! How can I possibly go there?’ But that’s the difference between Harlee and me. My life is crazy. Her life’s insane. And she will do what it takes to make it through another day.”

Also in the premiere, Lt. Matt Wozniak (Ray Liotta) — Harlee’s crooked boss and mentor — strikes a deal with an FBI agent that will keep himself and his crew out of jail.

“Harlee and Woz are still keeping the streets safe, and they never mess with good and innocent people,” executive producer Jack Orman told TV Insider. “In fact, there are times when they wouldn’t be doing their jobs if they weren’t corrupt. But put them in a different TV show and they could easily be the bad guys.”

ONCE UPON A TIME

Season 6 of the fairy-tale drama waves its magic wand tonight, with the episode Tougher Than the Rest. Snow is still asleep in Storybrook­e, and David and Hook are racing to stop Gideon before he confronts Emma. Plus, Regina realizes that everyone — maybe even Robin — is better off in the alternate world where the Evil Queen was defeated.

Executive producers Adam Horowitz and Eddy Kitsis recently told Entertainm­ent Tonight that the B.C.-filmed series will air a musical episode this season.

“We actually started (planning) this around September,” Kitsis said. “There are these two composers that we met, Alan Zachary and Michael Weiner, who are big fans of the show, and ABC put us together with them because a musical is the one thing and the one request that fans have been asking for six seasons.”

Added Horowitz: “What we’ve also worked really hard to do is make this musical a part of the show, so it’s not just like a one-off episode or it’s not just like a standalone (special).”

Once Upon a Time airs on ABC and CTV.

BROADCHURC­H

The third and final season of the acclaimed British drama Broadchurc­h begins tonight on Showcase, picking up three years after the fallout of Danny Latimer’s murder. But there’s no rest for detectives Alec Hardy (David Tennant) and Ellie Miller (Olivia Colman), as they investigat­e a serious sexual assault in the Dorset community.

When Season 3 debuted in Britain last Monday, Broadchurc­h became the ITV network’s biggest drama since Downton Abbey, sucking in 7.5 million viewers. In the lead-up to the premiere, to maintain the veil of secrecy, even the cast was kept in the dark about the storylines.

“At the moment I’m just in it and no one knows what the hell is happening,” Lenny Henry told Metro. co.uk.

“With the script, you’re given your bit and just enough informatio­n to go on and then you do it. It could all switch! I could be the bad guy!”

 ??  ?? Jennifer Lopez
Jennifer Lopez

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