Jersey City Takes Center Stage In New Netflix Series

JERSEY CITY, NJ — New Jersey has been featured in its fair share of television shows and movies, and now it can add one more to the list: Netflix's "Seven Seconds," a gritty cop drama set in Jersey City.

In the series, a black teenager from the city is accidentally run over by a white police officer rushing to the hospital to meet his pregnant wife. The officer and his fellow cops attempt to cover it up, inflaming racial tensions in the city.

When asked if Jersey City officials had any comment on the new show, spokesperson Kimberly Wallace-Scalcione told Patch, "It is fiction. The writer said she based it on Baltimore. "

Veena Sud, the show's creator, told CNN she was inspired to write about police violence after the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, but did not say she based her story on those events. (Gray died after suffering a spinal injury in the back of a police car; in "Seven Seconds," a teenage boy is killed after being struck by an off-duty officer's personal car.)

All 10 hour-long episodes of the show were released on Netflix on Friday. It's received mix reviews from critics, with the New York Times saying it "has ambitions far beyond telling a procedural story, and that’s where it becomes the most dour and heavy-handed." It stars Clare-Hope Ashitey, Raul Castilo, Russel Hornsby and Regina King.

Have you seen the show? What do you think? Let Patch know in the comments.

You can watch the trailer here:

Image via Netflix, used with permission