For those of you sad over the loss of ‘Blue Bloods’, we have some good news! CBS has given a straight-to-series order to spin-off ‘Boston Blues‘ which sees Donnie Wahlberg reprise his role as Danny Reagan.
The new show will see Wahlberg return as Officer Danny Reagan as he moves from the NYPD to a new job with Boston PD. Once in Boston, he is paired with Detective Lena Peters, the eldest daughter of a prominent law enforcement family, so keeps the family element, albeit with a different family, but also has a connection back to the original with Wahlberg as Danny.
According to Deadline, who broke the news, ‘Boston Blue’ actually wasn’t originally pitched as a ‘Blue Bloods’ spin-off. It comes from ‘S.W.A.T.’ writers Brandon Sonnier & Brandon Margolis who pitched the idea of a series based around a family of police officers in Boston whose eldest daughter is partnered with a new transfer from LAPD. CBS liked the script and ordered the series, but saw the opportunity to tweak it to change the LAPD officer to NYPD’s Danny Reagan, and make it a ‘Blue Bloods’ spin-off instead! Given Wahlberg has a strong connection with Boston, it made perfect sense for him to be the actor they brought across.
‘Blue Bloods’ ran for 14 seasons on CBS with a large ensemble cast led by Tom Selleck, before bowing out at the end of 2024. Despite it still being popular, the issue with a show with a large cast, especially one based around a family – so it’s not easy to replace the leads (like you can with things like ‘NCIS’ or ‘FBI’) – is that it comes with a large wage bill which becomes prohibitively more expensive as the show goes on… especially after 14 seasons… Creating a new show, and bringing over an original cast member allows the “brand” to live on, and also for them to be able to have some guest spots for any of the original cast who are willing to come back.
Along with working on ‘S.W.A.T.’, Sonnier and Margolis also were writers on the first five seasons of ‘The Blacklist’, before moving to develop and showrun ‘Bad Boys’ spin-off series ‘L.A.’s Finest’. The are currently exec producers on Fox drama ‘Alert: Missing Person’s Unit’.
‘Boston Blue’ will be produced by CBS Studios in association with Jerry Bruckheimer Television. Sonnier and Margolis will serve as showrunners and will executive produce alongside Bruckheimer, KristieAnne Reed of JBTV, and Wahlberg.
‘Boston Blues‘ Season 1 does not yet have a premiere date, but is pencilled in for the Winter 2025/26 Season on CBS in the USA. We’ll have to wait and see if someone in the UK decides to pick it up. If you want to keep track of this or any other shows, you can add them via our Never Miss system, and you’ll be notified when it gets a UK premiere date.
