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On Call centres around cops on the job in Long Beach, California, starting with a routine stop that leads to a person of very much interest, known as Maniac, if they can find him in the long term.
Partnered together are hard-as-nails long-termer Traci Harmon (Troian Bellisario) and rookie Alex Diaz (Brandon Larracuente), and while there’s not much I can say at this point, so as to avoid spoilers, I can say the former is not well-liked by the bigwigs, because she rubs people up the wrong way.
What I can say is that On Call is rather similar to the 2009 police drama, Southland, which ran until 2013 and dealt with many critical situations for cops, although this new one’s still to find its feet.
The short running time generally leads to it showing a situation, but resolving it before too long. However, if it had been the conventional 45 minutes for this sort of show, it would’ve been better so it could also focus on other cops partnered up, as they go about their day-to-day activities.
I’ll update this review once I’ve seen more of the episodes, but while all of them were available prior to launch, occasionally the dialogue’s either spoken quite fast or feels a little muffled, so I’ll watch the rest on launch, as subtitles will be available.
Either way, this is recommended so far. I just hope it does improve a tad, because it’s got legs, and I do miss Southland, although across five seasons, they had brought storylines to a head across all the individual characters, so I could say this might just be Southland II, albeit transferring the action from Los Angeles to California.
Additionally, some of the episodes are directed by ER‘s Eriq La Salle (Logan) – who also appears onscreen as Sergeant Lasman, and the opening episode includes a ‘Coming up this season’ montage at the end.
Thanks to our friends at Prime Video for the screener prior to release.
Trailer posted December 19th 2024, 18:00
Review posted: January 9th 2025, 8:00
On Call is on Prime Video from today. All episodes are available from day one.
Cert: 
Running time: 25-30 minutes per episode (8 episodes)
Release date: January 8th 2025
Studio: Prime Video
Format: 2.00:1
Series Directors: Eriq La Salle, Brenna Malloy
Producers: Ryan Janata
Creators: Tim Walsh, Elliot Wolf
Writers: Tim Walsh, Elliot Wolf, Molly Manning, Bryan Gracia, Tiffany Bratcher, John Conley
Music: Atli Örvarsson
Cast:
Traci Harmon: Troian Bellisario
Alex Diaz: Brandon Larracuente
Sergeant Lasman: Eriq La Salle
Sergeant Tyson Koyama: Rich Ting
Officer Barlowe: Mac Brandt
Lieutenant Bishop: Lori Loughlin
Officer Matthew Rolland: Rich Ceraulo Ko
Smokey: Lobo Sebastian
Officer Holt: Robert Bailey Jr
Rafa: Rafael Cabrera
Ava: Michelle C Bonilla
Leona: Annabella Didion
Maniac: Ian Down
El Osco: Bilal Sharmoug
Officer Maria Delgado: Monica Raymund
Gabriel Diaz: Grey Acuna
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.