News Series ‘Major Crimes’ Premieres Tonight: A Spinoff Of ‘The Closer’ [Video]
Major Crimes, a spinoff of The Closer, will begin tonight immediately after the final episode of the original series ends. Although the character of Brenda Leigh Johnson, played by Kyra Sedgwick, will be exiting stage left, her friend-nemesis Captain Sharon Raydor will live on. Mary McDonell, who gained notoriety when starring in Dances with Wolves, will reprise her role as the no-nonsense Captain Raydor in The Closer spinoff.
Major Crimes picks up where The Closer ends and includes the majority of The Closer cast. The new TNT series reportedly will focus more on the varying aspects of the justice system than the law enforcement end of putting criminals behind bars. Captain Sharon Raydor will be the guiding figure of the spinoff and will be forced to deal with the growing fiscal restraints of running the major crimes division in Los Angeles.
After seven award winning seasons, Kyra Sedgwick decided it was time to hang up her fictional badge and gun, relax, and consider new projects. Ratings for The Closer are still high, a fact that the Major Crimes cast and producers hope will play in their favor when introducing the spinoff series to throngs of loyal viewers and Brenda Leigh Johnson fans.
“I think everybody assumed that, at a certain point, Kyra wanted to move on. So we’d been talking about that possibility for, frankly, a couple of years before it actually happened,” TNT head of programming Michael Wright stated, according to the Columbus Dispatch.
Major Crimes viewers can expect to see police officers and Los Angeles prosecutors working together to put the bad guys away while grappling with the new normal of economic constraints. While the relationship between cops and robbers may not have changed during the past century, the cost of placing criminals in prison jumpsuits has grown immensely. The Major Crimes officers and prosecutors will be forced to engage in deal making with criminals far more frequently, which will likely generate frustration between the detectives and the prosecutor assigned to handle major crimes division cases.
