An intense, action-packed procedural following an African-American S.W.A.T. lieutenant torn between loyalty to the streets and duty to his fellow officers. He is tasked to run a new unit of highly trained but rugged outcasts who are the last stop for solving crimes in Los Angeles.
The series focused on the lives and cases of New York City divorce attorneys. It had a famously misanthropic opening credits sequence; in it, romantic photo albums were shown as the voice track played couples ripping into each other in court, as each of the show's principal attorneys interrogated them, one by one, on the stand.
Cop Rock attempted to combine police procedural with musical theatre, the former a genre in which Bochco had already been very successful with Hill Street Blues. The series centered on the LAPD and featured an ensemble cast that mixed musical numbers and choreography throughout storylines. For example, one courtroom scene in the pilot episode had the jury break into song, proclaiming their verdict on the defendant ("He's Guilty") Gospel-style. Another episode had a lineup of Hispanic suspects proclaim in song "We're the local color with the coppertone skin / And you treat us like we're guilty of some terrible sin."