Since crime dramas on broadcast networks like “Law & Order” and “FBI” are responsible for keeping the lights on, it should come as no surprise that these networks are looking to fill their empty baskets. To “Alert: Missing Persons Unit’s” credit, the format of “missing-person-of-the-week” episodes has been slightly adapted by the addition of an overarching mystery and a family drama.
The fundamental plan is about as simple as it gets, and it centers on Philadelphia’s elite missing-persons unit. This unit works to locate people who have been kidnapped and is involved in more high-stakes investigations in a single week than most police officers are involved in during their entire careers.
Yet the Fox series, from producer John Eisendrath, a veteran of “The Blacklist,” along with Jamie Foxx (adding to his busy slate of Netflix projects), takes a page from that show’s playbook by spicing up the formula. It bakes in a serialized aspect built around the detectives’ own missing-kid plot (a little too on the nose as these things go), along with what amounts to a love quadrangle to augment the work drudgery.
Nikki Batista, played by Dania Ramirez, is in charge of the operation and works side by side with her boyfriend (Ryan Broussard). However, she is able to rekindle her relationship with her former spouse, a private security specialist by the name of James Grant (Scott Caan, making his return to the detective genre following a lengthy run on “Hawaii Five-0”), who now invites him to become a member of their squad.
Before recent turns of events in the investigation brought them back together, the circumstances surrounding what drove Nikki and James apart were connected in some way to the disappearance of their child a number of years prior. Their interactions don’t go over well with either of their new partners, which leads to a good deal of arguing and suspicion amongst the three of them.
Not that there is really time for a whole lot of the personal issues, given that each of the episodes that were previewed includes stand-alone cases for people who want to see their police dramas conclude every week with somebody getting handcuffs slapped on them. There is something mechanical about those plots, which are made even more flimsy by the myriad of other tasks and distractions that the primary characters have to contend with.
However, it can be difficult to get people to return to a series after they have tried it out for themselves, so the questions about what really happened to Nikki and James’ son may offer a greater chance of that happening. This is especially true considering that Fox is attempting to jump-start the show’s debut by introducing it behind the audience that the network attracts when NFL football is being broadcast. (On Monday evening, the second hour will air within “Alert’s” regularly scheduled time slot.)
Fox has seen some success with “9-1-1” and other shows of a similar nature, and it is evident that the goal for “Alert” is to attract those viewers. It is possible that it will in the course of unraveling the ongoing mystery, but for the time being, this most recent effort to locate missing folks does not appear to be particularly fruitful.
On January 8 at 8 p.m. Eastern Time (or after NFL football), Fox will air the premiere of their new show “Alert: Missing Persons Unit.”