Melissa O’Neil on the ‘aspirational’ policing of The Rookie

Police procedurals have been around for almost as long as TV itself.

From the early days of Dragnet to perennials such as The Bill and Law & Order, the appeal is easy to see – cases of the week are solved within the hour, satiating puzzle lovers and those who like to see order restored in a topsy-turvy world.

It’s also an elastic genre that allows for a playfulness so you get variations ranging from straightforward classics (NYPD Blue), comedies (Brooklyn Nine-Nine), spoofs (Angie Tribeca) and the gritty ones (Homicide: Life on the Street).

As a form, it’s rarely been challenged until the fallout over the George Floyd murder by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, and the US faced a reckoning on many fronts about the role of policing in society.

Among those asked to reflect was Hollywood, and the countless productions of cop shows that have reinforced the lopsided power dynamic between law enforcement and the public, especially minority communities.

When it came to shows like COPS, which was cancelled in the aftermath but returned a year later, the issues were obvious – a normalisation of violence and heavy-handed tactics instead of de-escalation.

But there were also questions over seemingly more innocuous titles like Brooklyn Nine-Nine, whose eighth season, produced after the Floyd killing, worked in discussions about policing.

The Rookie, returning for its seventh season on August 18, is not COPS, nor is it the UK’s Line of Duty or films such as The Departed or Training Day.

Its raison d’être is lighthearted, family-friendly drama, and, in the words of one of its lead actors, Melissa O’Neil, it’s aspirational. It’s a depiction of what should be.

O’Neil has played Lucy Chen since the series premiered in 2018, representing a character that is not often the focus of a cop procedural. Lucy is young, she’s a woman, she’s biracial with Asian heritage, and she doesn’t buy into bluster or throwing her power around.

O’Neil told The Nightly the show’s writers and producers haven’t tried to isolate The Rookie from the wider conversations around policing and that there is “an acknowledgment of the imperfection of that job”.

“There are impossible situations, and at the same time, there is an element of aspirational storytelling,” she said. “For the heroes we have on the show, they’re not always doing everything perfectly; however, they are the kind of police officers out there who get into it because they do want to make a change.

“They do want to do good.”

Lucy started the series as a newbie and now, moving into the seventh season, she is in a senior position within the team. It’s the charting of her journey over the years that’s made her story something viewers can tap into.

It’s even moved some young women into following Lucy’s steps. O’Neil said she’ll get messages from young women who saw something in Lucy that they hadn’t before.

“(They) didn’t realise that law enforcement could be populated by people that they feel a kinship to, and that they’ve been inspired to enter into law enforcement and to be somebody (like Lucy) in that space.

“That’s really exciting because we all have our own opinions about that profession and its usefulness in the world, and how that job is executed.

“At the same time, all of these bigger bodies are made up of individuals, and it’s really exciting to hear that people who are seeing these characters and identifying the positive qualities in them are being so moved to actually enter that space so that more like that are in the job.”

O’Neil said she feels a greater empathy for the profession she didn’t understand before, and that it has been “educational to say the least”.

The Rookie works with consultants and the actors go through practical training every year. One of the things they do is run through different scenarios using virtual reality gear. It might seem trite at first, as if they’re playing a game, but O’Neil said that later, when she’s on set and a scene is playing out a similar incident, she’ll flash back to a VR experience.

If the scene is staged in a way that feels different to the training, she’ll put her hands up and say so. “I’m terribly yappy,” she said, with a laugh. “I am absolutely somebody who will speak up if something doesn’t feel right. Doesn’t mean I’m always right, but I am eager to (say something).”

But she emphasised that she wasn’t hired as a writer, and when it comes to Lucy’s storylines, she’s in the passenger seat, and trusts the filmmakers to chart her course.

“I’m aware of how opinionated I am, and I want to be sensitive to everybody’s role. If I’m not hired as a writer, that’s not my function,” she added.

Still, O’Neil is a caretaker for Lucy, and it’s in the smaller details she can shepherd her characterisation, especially as Lucy has grown over the past seven years into a confident person.

The thing about police procedurals is that it’s not just the mysteries to be solved, it’s the characters you have to want to follow. They’re the audience surrogate.

For O’Neil, The Rookie ensemble is like a boy band: “There’s somebody for everyone. You get to choose your favourite character and go on a journey with them.”

There are also quite a few of them who can sing, like O’Neil, who won the third season of Canadian Idol when she was a teenager. Maybe there’s a musical episode in the works?

“I mean, we’re getting to that point where it’s like, if we have enough seasons, we can kind of have one of those weird standalone episodes, I don’t know if we’re quite there yet!”

One can only dream a dream.

The Rookie season seven is on 7plus from August 18