Tribeca

Carleton works as a mounted policeman and Harry runs the local restaurant Zadies. The first TV-series to come out of Robert De Niro's production company, Tribeca Productions, revolves round their lives. There is a different director for each episode and the content range from pure comedy to c-ontroversial drama. The TV-series, like the production company, is named after the area Triailgle below Canal, Tribeca, in lower Manhattan.
COMMENTARY
Tribeca is an American TV-series in seven parts (i1 50-60 minutes) with high ambitions to describe contemporary New York. The slow pace and the narrative of the TV-series is un-typical and makes it difficult to categorize. The series bears more resemblance to filmed short stories iI la New York Stories than already existing genres within television.
In Tribeca there are no canned laughter, live audience, conventional action or dramatic cliffhangers. Instead the focus is on different relationships and the only thing that (loosely) holds the episodes together is Carleton the mounted policeman (Joe Morton) and Harry the cafe owner (Philip Bosco). Harry's cafe Zadies is a meeting place for young people looking for somewhere to live, beatniks meeting for poetry readings, theater groups and the ''ordinary'' people of the series. Harry plays the part of the easy-going teddybear, he is experienced, worldly-wise and kind, without ever overshadowing the real content of the episode.
Quite the opposite, both his and Carleton's characters are played down and their actions are take-offs or comments on the course of events in the episodes rather than the main focus.
Tribeca is hardly targeting the Dallas/ Roseanne audience; if anything it caters more to an intellectual audience who prefers Woody Allen and off-Broadway plays. The dialogue is sharp enough to make parents say things like: ''Success in today's art world has nothing to do with profoundity, but with fads and fashion'', and this told as a warning to children with artistic ambitions. You can sense that this is what the people behind Tribeca (Tribeca Productions under guidance of Robert De Niro that is) believes to be a general truth about TV-series - and their aim is to change this.
The workmanship of Tribeca is impeccable. An American TV-series has never looked more like a proper feature film. The New York settings from downtown Manhattan is appealing enough to fill you with a constant urge to call the travel agency. The acting is several notches above what could usually be expected from a TV-series.
The theme tunes by Me Phi Me, alternatively Nils Lofgren, are perfect.
Despite this Tribeca was never a roaring success with the public (the series has already been taken off the air in the USA), but it won the appreciation of the critics by its creativeness and also by breaking new ground for future TV-series.':'
Susanne Ljung

Medverkande
Philip Bosco, Laurence Fishburne: Producent
Hans Tobeason, Robert Mickelson, Robert De Niro: Manus
Hans Tobeason, Jeffrey Solomon, Melanie Mayron, Lenore Kletter, David J. Burke, John Mankiewicz: Foto
Ed Lachman, Ron Fortunato: Musik
David Mansfield, Eddie Jobson: Talat språk
English