About the Show

“Citizen” is based on my real-life experience as a civilian watchdog embedded in the Seattle PD – no badge, no backup, just a lawyer dropped into the culture wars of urban policing.

The show follows Ali Larson, a principled attorney and mother who’s hired in the wake of protests over police misconduct to investigate cops. She thought the work would be straightforward – find the facts and hold the bad apples accountable. But the “truth” proves as gray as the Seattle skyline.

At first, the compromises the system extracts are small, easily justified in service of the larger cause of uniting the city and advancing her career. But when Ali suspects a high-ranking chief of protecting a rookie cop who shot an unarmed black man, the stakes grow impossibly high. She becomes a lightning rod for a divided city – reviled by cops, mistrusted by activists, and manipulated by the very city officials who hired her. The spotlight exposes the cracks in the foundation of Ali's city, her moral code, and her marriage. In her isolation, she leans on an unlikely secret ally – a detective who’s her adversary at work, and at home, her husband’s best friend.

Just as Friday Night Lights used football as a lens to examine small town Texas life, Citizen uses policing to explore the moral complexity of life in a supposedly progressive city. Like Alicia in The Good Wife, Ali has to navigate entrenched political and relationship dynamics.

It's the story I lived, and now I'm ready to tell it.

It's the story I lived, and now I’m ready to tell it.