It was a surprisingly warm February day when 'Blue Bloods' stars Will Estes and Nick Turturro hit the streets of Washington Heights to film scenes for an upcoming episode.

Dressed in their police duds, the two ran up and down streets while yelling after an imaginary perp, explored a vandalized shoe store and sped around the slushy neighborhood in a police cruiser.

There's no better way to get the New York City feel than actually film in New York, right?

"It's great," Estes said. "It's really hard to fake it some place else. I think we've done a great job utilizing Brooklyn and Manhattan, really showcasing how great it is.

"It's fun, there's no place like shooting in New York."

Brian Dennehy has played a variety of roles over the years, everything from Cocoon to voicing a part in the kids' movie Ratatouille. But I tend to think of his tough-guy roles, like he played in Assault on Precinct 13 and Righteous Kill, released in theaters in September.

Now he's got another tough-guy role in the works. He's been tapped to co-star opposite Donnie Wahlberg on TNT's drama pilot Bunker Hill.

The pilot, directed by Jon Avnet, explores crime, corruption and deceit in the Bunker Hill section of Boston. Wahlberg plays Mike Moriarty, a cop who returns to Boston to protect the streets he grew up on, and Dennehy plays Martin Kelsey, a flower shop owner who was a former mob boss.

Sounds similar to The Departed, doesn't it, with the Boston setting and another Wahlberg on board? With Dennehy, Wahlberg, and Avnet involved, I'll look forward to hearing more about this project. Avnet was the producer and director of the aforementioned Righteous Kill, and I've appreciated his work dating back to 1983's Risky Business, where he served as producer.

There was a time I was completely obsessed with The Streets of San Francisco. I never really watched it when it was on ABC in prime time, except for an episode here and there, but I used to watch it every day in the afternoon after school when a local station aired repeats. It was one of the highlights of the day for a while. It's one of those solid 70s shows with a good cast and some interesting guest stars (Arnold Schwarzenegger as a weight lifter who kills people when they make fun of his size!).

CBS is going to remake the show, and I can only imagine it's going to be CSI: San Francisco. The beauty of these old shows was the cast, so I don't know what you get by just taking the title and putting new actors in there. Hopefully they'll keep the old theme song, and resist the urge to add rap lyrics to it.

Spike TV has a new cop show called Real Vice Cops Uncut. The show, which is taped in Memphis and Orlando, will rides along with real police officers involved in the world of narcotics, prostitution and gambling. It will be about undercover vice divisions and give audiences a taste of just how dangerous and unpredictable it is.

It sounds interesting, but I have to point out one thing. Isn't the mission compromised when the guy with the camera crew walks in? Just a thought.

(S02E07) In this week's Life on Mars, the hunter became the hunted.

Or, rather Gene Hunt became the hunted.

In a classic did-he-or-didn't-he cop-on-the-run scenario, the big figure in this top-notch cop show became a fugitive after being found at the scene of a murder with the finger of blame pointing only at him -- and no memory as to how he got there.

(S02E05) In much the same way as series one of Life on Mars dragged out the is-he-or-isn't-he-in-the-past component of the over-arching storyline, series two continues to keep the mystery of Sam Tyler's presence in 1973 a bit of a mystery, teasing us with glimpses of the future -- and the past.

When this week's episode started, it was as surreal as you could get, with Sam on sick leave in his bedsit, hallucinating images of his fellow-police officers on his television, and generally seeing things on his way in to the police station where a kidnapping crisis had developed.

It turned out Sam had been overdosed in the future (or was it the present?), and the doctors were desperately trying to restore his brain activity to normal.

(S02E02) Honour, loyalty, integrity, honesty; all things you would associate with officers of the law.

Not in the 1970s. Not in Life on Mars.

This week's episode delivered another cracker, with all the complexity of a feature-length movie, and slightly less of the mystery surrounding Sam Tyler's 'mission' in the past.

A recap really doesn't do the plot justice, but if you're easily put off by spoilers, you might want to watch this week's episode before making the jump...

The second (and final) series of Life on Mars starts on Monday, with John Simm returning as time-travelling detective Sam Tyler, who finds himself stuck in the 1970s, solving crime with modern police methods and trying to find a way back to 2006.

The BBC ONE trailers have been running for the past week, making use of a 1970s-style voice over, blue-hued segments from the forthcoming series, and the 'BBC Colour' logo -- from when BBC shows were differentiated in quality by being either plain old 'BBC' (ie. black and white) or 'BBC Colour' (ie. in glorious eye-popping reds and blues).