FOX’s new cop drama “Gang Related” is looking to put a spin on what has become a familiar theme on TV — a corrupt man searching for his moral center.
The series — premiering Thursday at 9 p.m. — focuses on Detective Ryan Lopez (Ramon Rodriguez), a member of Los Angeles’ Gang Task Force who is secretly aligned with a powerful Latino gang.
As an orphaned child, Lopez formed a bond with gang leader Javier Acosta (Cliff Curtis), who took him off the streets and raised him like a son.
“Ryan feels indebted to this guy and would do anything for him, especially when Javier kind of comes up with some really honorable reasons [for] why we’re doing what we’re doing,” Rodriguez told reporters about Lopez being Javier’s man on the inside.
“So I think for Ryan, in his head, it feels justified and right.”
Lopez’s loyalties are tested in Thursday’s premiere episode when his partner is killed by a gang member, setting up the series’ central tension.
“Really what the show becomes a lot about, although it focuses on the cops, it focuses just as much if not more on the Acosta family,” executive producer Scott Rosenbaum tells The Post. “In many ways it really becomes a show about a crime family trying to get out and trying to legitimize themselves.”
(Former “Lost” star Terry O’Quinn plays Lopez’s boss, Sam Chapel.)
In another difference from other cop shows, all of the “Gang Related” episode titles are in Spanish, and about 40 percent of the 13-episode series will be subtitled.
“We wanted to try to do as much as we could to tell the stories from the point of view of the Latino families,” Rosenbaum says.
Serving as Lopez’s new partner is longtime task force member Cassius Green, played by RZA. It’s a rare TV series role for the Wu-Tang Clan member, who convinced producers to change his character’s background from California to Harlem to more closely fit his own upbringing in the New York City projects. “That is a territory I know,” he said. “To me, I feel like Cassius is a guy who wants to be a part of the California scene, like it was more like a fulfilling of a dream for him, a job that gave him a chance to leave New York and to come and have a whole new experience in life.”
And since RZA and Rodriguez didn’t know each other before the show, the actors’ relationship grew just as their characters’ did.
“During this show, Cassius gets to know Ryan in the same way that [I] get to know Ramon,” RZA said. “I think some of that … spills over, and you feel it.”