Today, during the first session of the Television Critics Association press tour, Tom Selleck, Donnie Wahlberg and producers Mitchell Burgess and Robin Green, spoke to the press about their upcoming CBS TV series, “Blue Bloods”.

Mitchell Burgess and Robin Green were also writers and producers on “The Sopranos” but they are going in a different direction with “Blue Bloods”. Instead of exploring the world of crime as they did in “The Sopranos”, Burgess and Green are exploring the lives and dynamics of multiple generations of a New York City police family. Selleck plays a police commissioner, and Wahlberg is a detective.

“We did the antihero thing for all those years,” said Green. “But now we’re interested in looking at what a hero is like in today’s world. We wanted to look at a different morality.”

She added that they also wanted to develop a show that would combine a family drama with a police procedural. “We had never really seen those two melded together.”

Selleck and Wahlberg both agreed that the family element was what attracted them to the project. They were both also pleased that the show would be shooting in and around New York City.

“That was essential for me,” Selleck said. “It’s hard to argue that it’s not a better series because it was shot in New York.”

He added that he was continuing with the popular “Jesse Stone” TV movie series: “I made it very clear that I wanted to keep doing those.”