As he’s gotten older, Tom Selleck uses his chipped-from-granite bulkiness and dour poker-face as measures of authority. At the same time, he hasn’t lost those flashes of sarcasm and more straightforward humor that make him the kind of guy both women and men think would make him kinda fun to hang out with. And “being fun to hang out with” in TV language translate as a high Q rating: Selleck is always rated one of the medium’s most-liked actors.

It was Magnum P.I. that made Selleck a star, of course. That 1980s series was a more Hawaiian-shirt-bright, light-hearted affair, in general. But it also carried a dark undertone: Magnum, you’ll recall, was a former Navy SEAL commando who’d done three tours of duty in Vietnam. This was the character Selleck used to establish himself as a TV star, and one definition of a TV star is that he’s someone you want to spend time with him every week. (It’s why so many movie stars have flopped trying to transition into weekly TV.)

When Blue Bloods was first announced as a series, my first thought was, “Oh, no — no more Jesse Stone movies?” So I was relieved to have read that Selleck agreed to do Bloods with the stipulation that he also continue with an occasional Stone. (This could be a dictionary definition of “getting blood from a stone,” I think.) At a time when the broadcast networks aren’t investing in made-for-TV movies anymore, the star has made the Jesse Stone franchise viable.

http://watching-tv.ew.com/2011/05/22/tom-selleck-jesse-stone/

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