APB

Gee-whiz gadgets and a generally light tone make this drama a better bet for family watching than many gory and/or exploitative police procedurals. Many of Reeves' inventions have a Batman-esque appeal: A motorcycle that drops a set of deterrent spikes to slow down criminals during high-speed chases is a typical example. And they're made to stop criminals, not to hurt or kill them, which also contributes to APB's cheery tone, since the bad guys are clapped into jail at the end of every episode instead of meeting a grisly end, as happens on many cop shows. There are no long, lingering shots of (usually female, often scantily clad) dead bodies here; a more typical scene has Reeves and his cohorts gathering to test out a new whirligig and give each other high-fives.

Yet APB isn't total fluff. The law enforcement storylines are given a bit of emotional weight with peeks into the officers' private lives: Reeves is married to his work; Murphy has a fellow police officer ex and a complicated young son. The crimes the APB officers solve can be dark, too. But that's where Gideon Reeves comes in, and everything's put back to rights when the credits roll, the victims recovered, the miscreants jailed.