Edward Burns' new TNT crime drama, 'Public Morals,' took 20 years to materialize

Edward Burns says he's been in “preproduction for 20 years,” his entire filmmaking career, on “Public Morals.”

The actor-writer-director behind such acclaimed independent features as “The Brothers McMullen” and “She's the One” brings his talents to TNT with his New York-set 1960s crime drama premiering Tuesday, Aug, 25. Reunited with executive producer Steven Spielberg, who directed him in “Saving Private Ryan,” Burns stars as police officer Terry Muldoon, who tries to steer his officers through a war between Irish mobsters while his wife (Elizabeth Masucci) wants out of the city.

“The show was borne out of different ideas I've had for films, going back to ‘The Brothers McMullen,'” Burns explains. “My dream project, and a script that I actually wrote for Steven Spielberg and DreamWorks back in '97, was called ‘On the Job.' It was my attempt at an Irish-American ‘Godfather,' set against the NYPD. It was 20 years in a big Irish cop family, and I could never get that film made, but I never gave up hope that I would make it.

“As I would walk around Manhattan, I was constantly taking mental notes ... and later, with my iPhone, taking pictures of locations that I would want to use in that film. I would look for those streets and those old restaurants and bars that were stuck in time and hadn't changed. And I had four other scripts that had to do with Irish gangsters in Hell's Kitchen.”

“Public Morals” is the result, and its ensemble also includes: Michael Rapaport as Muldoon's second-in-command, who takes a personal interest in a prostitute (Katrina Bowden); Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Wass Stevens, Patrick Murney and Austin Stowell as other cops in the Public Morals Division; and Brian Wiles as a fresh-faced newcomer to the force. Timothy Hutton appears early on as an underworld bookie.

The cars, the clothing and even the music of “Public Morals” have to reflect the mid-1960s. Burns, who also wrote and directed all 10 first-season stories, points out that he had a lot of help from “born-and-bred New Yorkers.”

“I was very lucky in that all of the department heads stayed on for all 10 — the director of photography, the production designer, the music supervisor — and they're all folks that I've been working with for a long time on all of my indie films,” he said.

Though it's the first under his full guidance, “Public Morals” isn't Burns' first TNT series: He played the infamous Bugsy Siegel in Frank Darabont's 2013 drama “Mob City.” Burns attests that even when he's just an actor for hire, each project adds something to his own filmmaking.

In fact, he says his “Mob City” work “opened my eyes to what is possible in television. I knew, as a fan of ‘The Sopranos' and ‘Mad Men,' the kinds of stories you could tell. You could go deeper with characters and paint on a much bigger canvas than you could in a film. And I took those stacks of unproduced screenplays and thought, ‘Why don't I take my two passions, the big family cop story and the big family gangster story, and connect the two families through marriage (with Muldoon's aunt wed to the Hutton character)?' And the minute I had that idea, I was off to the races.”