Line of Fire
Cast & Key People
Our Review
NBC launched its fall procedural slate with a family act, and Line of Fire is more competent than its premise suggests. When a US Marshal falls in the line of duty, what reads as a cut and dry case unravels into a deadly conspiracy that pulls in a family of agents working federal side by side: FBI, US Marshals, Secret Service, DOJ. Joshua Safran, the mind behind queer soaps and network comebacks, built it for Universal Television, and the premiere week critics landed at 91 percent on Rotten Tomatoes with a solid if unglamorous Metacritic 68.
The cast carries the ensemble well: Peter Krause as the anchor father, Hope Davis matching him as the mother in the business, with Kat Cunning, Tommy O’Brien, Taylor Bloom, and Charlie Barnett filling the sibling branches. The trick with a family of federal agents is making the nepotism feel earned, and the early episodes mostly do it by letting the job strain the family rather than the other way around. It helps that the show knows a case of the week can still build a conspiracy if the edits stay mean.
New episodes have been airing on NBC since September 21 and stream next day on Peacock, where the whole run will sit. For a network trying to rebuild a procedural bench, this is the strongest of the fall’s straightforward crime entries, and the most bingeable once the case connections start paying off.
Our score: 7/10. A network thriller with real craft and a conspiracy worth the weekly commitment.
