Hour-long cop drama set in Chicago
By MICHAEL SCHNEIDER
Fox has given a greenlight to the Shawn Ryan pilot "Ridealong."

Fox had earlier handed a put pilot order to the Chicago-set cop show (Daily Variety, Aug. 10).

Project's a personal passion project of Ryan's, who grew up in nearby Rockford, Ill. "Ridealong" will center on three groups of police officers --ranging from uniformed beat cops to the female chief of police.

Ryan wrote and exec produces the hour-long drama, which comes from 20th Century Fox TV.

In August, Ryan said he hoped to shoot the skein in Chicago, which he has made a major part of the show.

"It's a city I'm very familiar with, and one I haven't seen photographed much, at least on TV," Ryan said at the time, adding that he thought Chicago had become "the center of the universe."

"When I pitched it to the people at Fox, (Chicago was) the first character I described," Ryan said. "It's a gorgeous town and is the most interesting architectural city in America."

Ryan said Chicago is also a "city with a big crime problem at the moment," which will inform the show.

Ryan said "Ridealong" will mostly take place on the streets of Chicago, and will be populated by unique people -- including the central lead character, a Polish-American cop who plays up his heritage.

"There will be a few twists that make it different from other cop shows on the air and will make it Fox-like," Ryan said.

"Ridealong" will showcase close-ended cases, "but something will happen in the pilot that will have overarching (ramifications) that we deal with over time. It will be less serialized than 'Grey's' but more than 'CSI.' "

Ryan said "Ridealong" will also include elements of Chicago's shady politics and underworld.

"I don't think it will be as gritty a world as 'The Shield' was, but it will feel authentic," Ryan said.

"Ridealong" comes from Ryan's Midd Kid shingle, which he runs with Marney Hochman Nash.

The busy Ryan is behind the upcoming FX series "Terriers" and is an exec producer on "Lie to Me."

http://www.variety.com

The Shield's Shawn Ryan Lands Psycho & Nuclear Sub Pilots
Terriers (*sniff*) and The Chicago Code might have fizzled out, but creator Ryan will be back in a big way in 2012.
August 22, 2011

We still love The Shield and mourn for Terriers here at IGN, so it was great to hear that the creator of those two series, Shawn Ryan, has had a busy past few days. Ryan now has pilot deals at both ABC and CBS.

Deadline is reporting that Ryan and feature writer Karl Gajdusek just landed a pilot at ABC (with a hefty pilot production commitment) called Last Resort. The show revolves "around the crew of a U.S. nuclear submarine who become hunted after ignoring an order to shoot nuclear missiles. They escape to a NATO listening outpost where they publicly declare themselves to be the world's smallest nuclear nation with 24 nuclear warheads."

The second project, at CBS, is Ryan's pilot with fellow showrunner Simon Mirren (Criminal Minds). They have a put pilot commitment for a new show about a genetic scientist who uses his newfound discovery that he has the psychopath gene to help the FBI catch killers. The series, which is being described as a cross between Criminal Minds and Dexter, is apparently inspired by "the true story of UC Irvine Professor James Fallon, a brilliant but genetically flawed scientist who, while helping to unlock the mysteries of the genome code, discovered that he was a psychopath linked to a long line of serial killers, including axe murderer Lizzie Borden."