In the Critics’ Line of Fire

TVNZ+ has just added Line of Fire, a hot-off-the-satellite NBC drama about a family of federal agents starring Peter Krause (9-1-1) and Hope Davis (Furious, Your Honor).

The premise sounds dreadfully contrived — two generations of the Hollingworths work for different law enforcement agencies — but early reviews have been positive.

Variety said the first two episodes were “promising and engaging” with “all of the essential elements that make procedural dramas so fun. With a stellar cast and some detailed mysteries… it’s clear NBC has a gem on its hands.”

The Los Angeles Times called it “a conspiracy thriller, wrapped inside an episodic procedural, stuffed into a dysfunctional family comedy, and it’s the combination of these elements that keeps the show buoyant — fleet, essentially light — notwithstanding the suspense and tension and shootings and stabbing”.

“Line of Fire takes viewers on a soapy rollercoaster ride filled with exciting twists, intriguing cases, romance, and a stacked cast,” Decider said.

Less effusive was The Hollywood Reporter: “If it’s not exactly reinventing the wheel, it at least makes said wheel look shiny enough to seem worth taking out for another spin … Silly but diverting.”

“Maybe people will tune in for the mystery thriller of it all,” TV Guide said, “but it’s the five Hollingsworths working as a unit, and their complicated family baggage, that should keep people coming back.”

Trade paper The Wrap called it “the kind of palatable procedural that falls squarely in the middle of the road for network TV … That doesn’t mean it’s unwatchable or even bad. It’s not. It’s just not all that good, either.”