Golden Boy: The Complete Series

CBS's short-lived police drama Golden Boy uses a flash forward to open and close each episode. In the present day, Walter Clark (Theo James) starts out as a 27-year-old beat cop, but in seven years he will be the state's youngest police commissioner, and the series aims to show how he got there. In the pilot, Clark foils an armed robbery, earning him a promotion to homicide. His new partner, Don Owen (Chi McBride), finds Clark's ambition worrisome since it entails cutting corners and making ethical compromises, so Owen does double-duty as his mentor. In order to work his way up the command chain, Clark seeks out high-profile cases, but a few obstacles stand in his way, including unreliable younger sister Agnes (Stella Maeve), recovering drug addict mother Nora (Polly Draper), ex-con father Walter Sr. (Michael Madsen), and Machiavellian colleague Christian Arroyo (Kevin Alejandro). Arroyo, who's married, is having an affair with his own partner, Deb McKenzie (Bonnie Somerville), a situation that Clark promises to keep secret but only as leverage. Along the way, Clark falls for a reporter (Trieste Kelly Dunn) and makes an enemy out of her ex-husband (Eric Morris)—the deputy mayor—presenting even more challenges for this man on a mission. Although Golden Boy ties up most loose ends, the finale leaves a few questions open for a second season that never arrived. Compiling all 13 episodes from 2013, this is recommended, overall. (K. Fennessy)