Despite the iconic image of the badarse cop, the crime genre's anti-heroes have a short shelf life. The most successful cops, in television terms, walk and talk from a place of moral certainty.

"With the most successful long-running shows, like the Law & Order shows, the cops are not on some cathartic journey, they're just straight cops and they maintain that," producer Steve Knapman says. "You can do police corruption stories, but it is an inescapable truth that when you have a problem and the police turn up, you're very glad to see them."

Knapman, who with writer Kris Wyld has produced a slew of taut, smart police dramas, including Wildside, White Collar Blue and East West 101, is behind Nine's new police drama The Strip. "What we have learned, after many years of working with detectives, is that they don't make judgments, they don't take the moral high ground and they do understand why people do bad stuff," he says.

Rush producer Mimi Butler agrees. She says cop stories work on an elemental level.

"There are high stakes when you're telling a story involving good and bad, human frailties and moments of crisis. You have the ability, each week, to tell a story where someone might die or is at the end of their journey."

The Strip and Rush - same genre, very different pack drill - are launching in a post-Underbelly world. Nine's blockbuster organised crime drama was praised for its writing, direction, cinematography and music.

More significantly, however, it proved that the edgy, noirish police drama, previously the calling card of the ABC (Wildside, Phoenix, Blue Murder) and SBS (East West 101), could work commercially.

Knapman Wyld, who are producing The Strip for Nine, have form in the genre with the brilliant Wildside and East West 101. John Edwards, who is producing Rush for Ten, won critical acclaim for cable's Love My Way and produced the ABC's action-oriented Police Rescue. But that collective body of work, though broad and brilliant, is not scented with the smell of commercial success.

Rush co-producer Mimi Butler says the focus is on storytelling and not on the boundaries of what commercial television can or cannot do: "In terms of being more commercial than not, we all know what is going to appeal to more people than less. If you have elements of warmth, action, adventure and excitement, you know the recipe for pleasing more people than not."

Knapman acknowledges the bar for commercial drama has been raised post-Underbelly but argues it is the mission of any television drama producer to try and raise the bar. "You're trying to do better and you're trying to make a show which is internationally competitive, that you're not ashamed of, that's as good as the best American show," he says.

"In terms of East West 101, we didn't anticipate the immense feeling towards the show, the response on the website, the response from all over Australia. I suppose the lesson, if there is a lesson in it, is that if you can't predict that, then remember the brief for [Britain's] Channel Four - do anything except what everyone else is doing. To do that you have to have no fear, and if you have fear of failure or fear of not getting the ratings, you are self-censoring."

The Strip is set on the Gold Coast and stars Aaron Jeffrey and Vanessa Gray as detectives Jack Cross and Frankie Tully. It also stars Simone McAullay, Bob Morley and Frankie J. Holden. Rush is set in Melbourne and stars Rodger Corser and Callan Mulvey as cops Lawson Blake and Brendan Joshua, plus Samuel Johnson, Catherine McClements and Josef Ber.

The most successful television shows - think Lost, Desperate Housewives, Prisoner, Blue Heelers - pre-position the emotional response in their title. Rush, says Butler, is about adrenalin: "How this team of tactical response officers respond to people in crisis, that immediacy of life and death, and the pressure you come under when you step into someone's chaos and try to untangle it."

The idea for The Strip, a name that conjures pictures of a noisy, sleazy main drag peppered with undesirables, came after Nine's drama executives Jo Horsburgh and Jo Rooney asked Knapman Wyld to deliver a crime series set on the Gold Coast.

"We came up with a premise which was very simple - all that glitters is not gold. The notion that this is the playground for Australians, this is the temple of materialism - but what's the value, what are you looking for, what do you want out of life?" Knapman says. "Crime is driven a lot by what people don't have, so we could see a way in. People come up here with a dream, do they fulfil the dream, and what if they don't?"

Knapman says authenticity - the single most important ingredient in any drama - comes from a pool of detectives that his company have used since it produced its groundbreaking series Wildside. The model for Knapman Wyld was the partnership of US writer David Milch and former NYPD detective Bill Clark, which gave birth to the critically acclaimed US series NYPD Blue.

"Boy, what a resource. I learned a lot from that approach," Knapman says. "The mission is to be authentic but in a completely fresh environment."

Knapman candidly acknowledges Wildside, the series which is still revered among TV critics, would not have worked commercially.

"Wildside was not user-friendly enough, it was too jagged for too many hours, and even though it was critically acclaimed, ordinary people - my family, for example - said it was good that it won awards, but they were being polite, you could see they didn't enjoy visiting it," he says.

Like Ten's Rush, The Strip has a dynamic pace and a tone that taps the contemporary, provocative edge of Underbelly.

"You want to make shows which you feel stand up internationally," Knapman says.

He acknowledges the American flavour of The Strip but adds: "That can be perceived as a bad way to put it, but I love American television, and when it's good, it's as good as anything."

Butler says it is less about an American sensibility and more to do with a sense of scale. "I think there is still a place in programming for The Bill and Blue Heelers and local police stations dealing with everyday incidents. It's the scale more than the tone which is different," she says.

"In Rush, and probably Underbelly, I can't speak for The Strip, that is what steps it more into what America tries to do, which is tell big events, a large scale murder in the middle of the city, a hostage situation and the like."

Knapman believes the strength of American police drama lies in the genre's clarity, economy and velocity.

"This show [The Strip] is very Australian, but when I went to Cannes to [the sales market] MIPCOM for the first time and walked around, I realised we were a very small country making a certain type of product, typecast by the buyers - soap opera and dramas which were scheduled in the daytime," he says.

"It's a tough genre to crack, but you have to go either of two ways, gritty realism and attack it with edge - like East West 101 - or this way, which is something different. It's enjoyable to visit but it has to tap a nerve with the audience."

The Strip premieres on Nine at 8.30pm on Thursday.
Rush premieres on Ten at 9.30pm on Tuesday.