“On Call,” the upcoming Wolf Entertainment drama, isn’t like the other Dick Wolf dramas on television.
The series is the company’s first scripted streaming series, rolling out all nine episodes on Amazon Prime Video on Jan. 9. It’s the first half-hour drama Wolf Entertainment has released — and the first show Elliot Wolf and Tim Walsh created.
“I think that for us, the biggest thing was we both had something to prove. We had, I think, a self-imposed chip on our shoulders, not only to make it great, but to make it feel different than everything that we previously worked on, everything that we see on the television landscape today,” Wolf tells Variety.
Elliot Wolf, the son of creator Dick Wolf, has served for years as the head of digital at Wolf Entertainment, overseeing online content and scripted podcasts. The original idea for “On Call” was a short-form series when that format was new on social media.
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“There’s no more relatable lens than the iPhone. Dash cam and body cam is all over the internet, the news. You see it in your week-to-week life. So, how can we create a storytelling experience, a fictional experience that feels that much more real, and hopefully that much more visceral, like you’re on the ground with these officers?” he says of the early conversations around the show. “When we started to see the writing on the wall with short-form as a bigger business, at that moment, it was sort of going out of vogue before coming back in vogue. I started thinking about it as a half-hour format. That’s really when it clicked. You look at the 1950s, 1960 prime-time schedule, it’s all half-hour procedural dramas, and there are none out there today.”
The series, following veteran police officer Traci Harmon (Troian Bellisario) and trainee Alex Diaz (Brandon Larracuente) features a great deal of body cam footage and, unlike other Wolf Entertainment procedurals, the storylines only follow the cast members at work, not at home. That was a choice from the beginning as the “show is about humans who happen to be police officers, and that is core to how we develop every character.”
“The heart and soul of the show is the dynamic between Harmon and Diaz and the most vulnerable moments for that dynamic and each individual character are in the car,” he says. “So with that in mind, and with the marching orders from Dick when we started writing was, I want every episode to feel like I’m shot out of a cannon.”
Monica Raymund in “Chicago Fire”
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The nine other Wolf Entertainment series currently on the air — three “Law & Order” shows, three “One Chicago” spinoffs and three “FBI” series — all live in the same universe. “On Call” isn’t based in New York, Chicago or Europe, but instead in Long Beach, California. So, could it be part of that same universe?
“They never are until they are,” Wolf says, coyly.
The series kicks off with Monica Raymund as a police officer who gets killed on the job; Raymund is best known for her role as paramedic Gabby Dawson on 139 episodes of “Chicago Fire.” But just because she’s a different character on “On Call,” it doesn’t mean the shows aren’t part of the same universe.
“There’ve been a couple examples of that,” Wolf says, citing Dylan McDermott, who played two different characters on “Law & Order: Organized Crime” and “FBI: Most Wanted,” and Jesse Lee Soffer, who led “Chicago P.D.” before leading “FBI: International” in a different role.
“I think that there’s a lot of people who would have to figure a lot of stuff out if that were to ever happen, but we’re on the west coast. It’s a flight away,” Wolf adds. “We’ll see.”
He also opened up about being a first-time creator under his father, and how helpful he was throughout the process.
“He was instrumental in some of the key decisions through the development process. He always gives himself the analogy of a baseball manager — he can set the lineup, but ultimately the players have to hit the home runs. And I think he did an incredible job of allowing us to take the swings, all the while still providing his wisdom and guidance,” Wolf says. “His only true advice was, ‘Don’t fuck it up.’ He came on the first day, which he does for all the shows, and this time looked directly at me and was like, ‘Don’t fuck it up.’”