‘The Protector’ While Familiar, Has a Family Dynamic That Ultimately, Works

Ally Walker’s new police procedural, “The Protector,” definitely got better as it went along for me. At first, I was pretty blase about the show since the premise felt a little too close to her last police procedural, ‘Profiler’ that premiered on NBC in 1996. The show’s saving grace for me wasn’t the rather standard plot about a mugging that eventually turns to murder, it was the way that Detective Gloria Sheppard (Walker) juggled her responsibilities as a mom of two boys with the grisly details that working homicide in a big city like LA entailed.

A Compelling Dichotomy
The show juxtaposed these two areas of her life with enough humor to keep me watching, since I’ve alway been a sucker for this kind of stuff. The Protector has a few other things in its favor as well however; the first is a good supporting cast, from Tisha Campbell-Martin (Martin, My Wife and Kids) as Sheppard’s partner Michelle Dulcet, to Chris Payne Gilbert (Dexter) as her brother Davey, with whom Sheppard and her sons have moved in with and her boss, Lt. Valdez, (Mel Ferrer) who runs interference for her with higher ups when her unorthodox crime solving techniques get her into hot water like any boss worth his salt should. I know I’ve tweeted this before but I just have to repeat it because it was such a great example of what the show is ultimately shooting for. I’m talking about the scene where Sheppard notices her older son Nick (Sage Ryan) about to thumb through her case folder while she’s fixing breakfast one morning. Rather than the harsh scolding one might expect in such a situation, she simply stops him with a warning that a photo of a corpse with its head split open is what awaited him if he opened that folder, and his fingers returned at light speed to where they belonged.

More moments like that is what I’m looking for from this show. It airs on Lifetime on Sunday nights at 10 p.m., so give it a shot, I think you’ll like what you find there.