Williams and Torres

New York Undercover is an American police drama that aired on the Fox television network from September 8, 1994, to February 11, 1999. The series starred Malik Yoba as Detective J.C. Williams and Michael DeLorenzo as Detective Eddie Torres, two undercover detectives in New York City's Fourth Precinct who were assigned to investigate various crimes and gang-related cases. The cast also included Patti D'Arbanville-Quinn as their superior, Lt. Virginia Cooper, and Lauren Vélez, who joined the cast in the second season as Nina Moreno, fellow detective and love interest to Torres. New York Undercover was co-created and produced by Dick Wolf, and its storyline takes place in the same fictional universe as Wolf's NBC series Law & Order, its spin-offs, the Chicago and FBI series, and Homicide: Life on the Street.

New York Undercover (whose working title during development was Uptown Undercover, named after the record label, Uptown Records, whose founder and CEO, Andre Harrell, was also the executive producer of the series) is notable for being the first police drama on American television to feature two people of color in the starring roles. In contrast to the popularity of NBC's "Must See TV" on Thursday nights in the 1990s, many African-American viewers flocked to Fox's Thursday-night line-up of Martin, Living Single, and New York Undercover.

In addition to the main storylines in each episode, subplots explored the private lives of the show's characters. For example, Det. Williams struggled to raise his young son, Gregory (George O. Gore II), while Torres was shown to be fighting family and other related problems, including having to cope with his father (Mike Torres, played by Jose Perez), whose drug addiction and HIV-positive status causes recurring issues, and a childhood-friend turned organized-crime boss.

At the beginning of the third season, a new detective, Tommy McNamara (Jonathan LaPaglia), was introduced as a principal character. In the third-season finale in May 1997, Torres and Moreno are married. However, in that same episode, Torres and McNamara are both killed by a gang of bank robbers.