‘Taxi Brooklyn’ Review: “Pilot” (1×01)

NBC, come on. I want to like you, I really do. You air smart comedies and shows that I really want to see succeed, like Community and The Cape (and yes, I’m serious about The Cape). But then you do things like Taxi Brooklyn.

Taxi Brooklyn, for those not in the know, is a new “action comedy” police procedural airing on NBC. It’s based on the French movie Taxi, which had three sequels and an ill-advised American remake starring Jimmy Fallon and Queen Latifah, and it shares the same basic plot, a police officer who is a bad driver is forced to be ferried around by a taxi driver who has skills that the police officer doesn’t expect. Wacky hijinks result.

Or, they should, which is why I put quotes around “action comedy”. The police procedural part is most definitely there, but aside from a car chase in the very beginning of the episode, there is little-to-no action. Every time that we would get a chance to see the taxi driver, Leo Romba, played by Jacky Ido, cut a drive somewhere down by half the time, we cut straight to the arrival. I would think that, in a show with Taxi in the name, the audience might want to actually see some of the Taxi part. Instead, what the writers think we’d rather see is the taxi driver use his tablet (in a very subtle and not at all obtrusive act of product placement) to access taxi maps or call his son on Skype.

The comedy, meanwhile, is…okay, there’s a scene in which the MD, leaving a crime scene, tells Leo and police detective Cat Sullivan, played by Chyler Leigh, that people around town are just dying to meet her, and is met by blank stares from both lead actors. “It was a joke, guys,” she says, and then walks away, leaving the stars to figure out that it was, indeed, a joke, and I could not even attempt to sum up the efforts of Taxi Brooklyn to be comedic better then that. Instead, the show is full up on drama. Cat’s father was killed under mysterious circumstances and her ex-husband is also the FBI agent called in to consult on her cases. Leo’s son is a country away and he is hunted by criminals, looking to kill him to eliminate the evidence he has tying them to a bank robbery. Even the preview of the rest of the season is filled with shots of predictably dramatic moments, interspersed with police work.

That said, I was afraid this was going to be another case of NBC remaking something that did not need to be remade and butchering it (like Ironside. Remember Ironside? No? Good). But all the elements of a good show are there. The lead actors have chemistry with each other, demonstrated early on in the episode, when there’s time for banter and it’s not all about catching the crook and getting the job done. The source material is interesting, and they do a good job of adapting it to something that someone might want to watch (bonus points for sticking to their roots and hiring a French actor to play Leo). They’ve even got a varied supporting cast, showing the wide variety of those living in Brooklyn, and including people I’m hoping to see more of, like Leo’s friend/roommate and Cat’s mother, both of whom seem like they could inject the comedy I’m looking to see in a show like this. I’m going to keep my eye on Taxi Brooklyn. It has the potential to be a really good action comedy, not just another police procedural.

Just, you know, not in the pilot episode.