Review: 'Line of Fire,' where conspiracy thriller meets procedural meets dysfunctional family comedy
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Set us as preferred Scholars of broadcast television may detect in “Line of Fire,” which premieres Monday on NBC (and streams on Peacock beginning Tuesday), a certain similarity to CBS’ long-running “Blue Bloods,” but nothing could be further from the truth! The family in “Blue Bloods” are all involved in the New York City justice system; in “Line of Fire” they’re federal agents, operating in and around Washington, D.C.And where the Irish Catholic Reagans would never miss a family dinner, the WASP-ish Hollingsworths of “Line of Fire” rarely get together at all.
(There is a dinner in the opening episode, for the benefit of someone outside the family, and it goes badly.) And no one in the latter series wears a mustache.The Hollingsworths are helpfully introduced with superimposed titles.Mike Hollingsworth (Peter Krause) and son Micah (Tommy O’Brien), sometimes called Junior — he never says he hates it, but I bet he hates it, I would hate it — are both in the Secret Service.
Younger son Russ (Taylor Bloom) is starting work in the Department of Justice.Daughter Clare (Kat Cunning) is FBI, mother Jane (Hope Davis) a U.S.
marshal.Mike is a week away from enforced retirement — it’s 57, I looked it up — and not ready to go.(There’s an old case involving an assassination attempt on the previous president that weighs on his mind, and he is hectoring Russ, the sweetest and most pliable of the Hollingsworths, to break protocol and fetch him some files.) Micah, who is more than ready for Mike to go, both to get him back as a father and to get him out of his hair, is assigned to protecting the current president’s daughter, Sydney (Savannah Lee Smith), code name Sparrow, with whom he is having a clandestine affair.
(The series, originally called “Protection,” is loosely inspired by the White Hou...