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The success or failure of the new NBC police drama "Shades of Blue" rests entirely on the shoulders of Jennifer Lopez.

Not because she's one of the executive producers (along with, believe it or not, Ryan Seacrest). Not just because she's the star.

The series balances on whether Lopez can be believable as a tough, no-nonsense NYPD detective. If viewers can see her as her character — see past her larger-than-life image — then the show works. If she's not believable … well, that's a problem.

And the verdict is … mixed. Lopez has her moments, but … she's not that good an actress. Not good enough to make you forget that she's Jennifer Lopez.

What you don't want is to be sitting there thinking, "Hey, that's the 'American Idol' judge pretending she's a police detective." And that's pretty much the way she comes across.

"Shades of Blue" (Thursday, 9 p.m., NBC/Ch. 5) features Lopez as Detective Harlee Santos, a tough cop who, along with her fellow detectives in Brooklyn, is a dirty cop. That includes her boss, Lt. Matt Wozniak (Ray Liotta).

The FBI, however, gets the goods on Santos and threatens her with prison. She's a single mother, so that would leave her teenage daughter without a parent.

So Santos is coerced into informing on her friends.

(The cast includes Ray Liotta, Drea de Matteo, Dayo Okeniyi, Vincent Laresca, Hampton Fluker, Warren Kole, Sarah Jeffrey and Santino Fontana.)

"Shades of Blue" wants to be a tough, gritty drama — it comes to us from creator/producer/writer Adi Hasak ("Generation Kill"), and Barry Levinson directed the first two episodes. And it's not a bad entry in the genre, although it's hardly ground-breaking.

It's a twist on the genre, but not enough of a twist. It feels like umpteen other cop shows.

In the current climate, it's either brave or just plain dumb to center a series on a cop who lies to protect a fellow cop who shoots and kills a man — and is completely unjustified in doing so; who tells her rookie partner, "The truth is in the paperwork."

(That's not the last time in the first episode that a cop is responsible for the death of a suspect. And it's a defense of the end justifying the means, even if not-so-innocent people end up dead.)

Lopez's character is saddled with that and some other truly bad dialogue. Like when the FBI is offering her a deal, and she says, "Wanna throw in a little something to sweeten the pot? Say my self-respect? Something I can use to buy back my soul?"

It's laughable.

This is not Lopez's first go-round in a weekly, hourlong network show. Way back in 1994, she actually played the same character — Melinda Lopez — in a pair of CBS series, "Second Chances" and "Hotel Malibu."

But she wasn't famous then. And she was playing a nice young woman, not a hard-boiled cop.

She was up for the former; not so much for the latter.

Scott D. Pierce covers television for The Salt Lake Tribune . Email him at spierce@sltrib.com; follow him on Twitter @ScottDPierce.