A Head Full of Ideas that were Driving Me Insane....

Another thing they initially whiffed on, and then tried to fix too late, was crediting the cast, by name and face, in the opening credits. Other than Bello and Aidan Quinn, I'd not heard of any of these actors, and they wasted a similar amount of time with panoramic flyovers of the East River and Central Park. By the time they added a more conventional set of credits, so we'd know who actually was playing Reg or Jane's dad, you could basically see the drain being circled.

Little things like that help a show, at least with me. Hill Street Blues had that same time slot, 30-ish years ago, and overcame bad initial ratings by making us care more about who these-all characters were. I'd never heard of anybody in the case (except Ed Marinaro, who'd been a football star at Cornell a few years before I got there), but by mid-first season, I knew who his character, and Henry's, and Belker's (he in the icon) by face and actor name. And that helps when you're trying to build a following.