Hollywood Station (2006)

David E. Kelley is developing Joseph Wambaugh's Hollywood Station for TV, and you can see why. Wambaugh crams his book with enough compelling characters and colorful anecdotes for two seasons of episodes. His is the rare police procedural less fixated on the central crime or the criminals (who are somewhat sketchily drawn) than on, well, police procedure: the day-to-day lives of cops. The ranks include a surfer, an aspiring actor, a still-nursing single mom, and an excitement junkie from a rich family — all toiling under the modern LAPD's crushing layers of federal oversight (''We got more layers than a Mafia wedding cake,'' one cracks). Tune in early.