Shades of Blue is an American crime drama television series created by Adi Hasak that premiered on NBC on January 7, 2016.

[10] A teaser trailer was made available on June 3, 2015, containing statements by Lopez, Ray Liotta, and Drea de Matteo.

[20] On February 26, 2015, Liotta, de Matteo, Vincent Laresca and Warren Kole were cast as Lt. Matt Wozniak, Det.

[7] On April 13, 2015, Gino Anthony Pesi was cast in a recurring role as Assistant District Attorney James Nava.

In their book, Reel Latinxs: Representation in U.S. Film and TV, academics Frederick Luis Aldama and Christopher González suggest that Santos is depicted as duplicitous and traitorous.

[28] Conversely, Willa Paskin, writing for Slate magazine, argues that Santos is presented too sympathetically and generously: she is "down-to-earth and competent, flipping from flirtatious to distressed, maternal to infuriated.

The site's consensus reads "Solid performances by Jennifer Lopez and Ray Liotta fail to lift Shades of Blue above the ranks of the pedestrian network procedural".

[39] Writing for USA Today, Robert Bianco gave the series two stars out of four, calling it "a thoroughly ordinary reworking of pretty much every crooked cop show and movie you've ever seen".

Club gave the series a C+ rating, saying that "While the plot starts out cut and dried, it becomes more twisty and turny in a way that will eventually bring the audience back to the opening scene of a makeup-less, de-glammed Santos confessing her sins into a camera".

[43] Matt Zoller Seitz of Vulture wrote that "Shades of Blue isn't a deep show, but it's a sensationally effective one.

It knows what it is (a compacted, melodramatic, commercial TV-friendly gloss on one of those '70s and '80s Sidney Lumet police-corruption thrillers) and it rarely steps wrong.

[53] In Italy, it premiered on pay-platform Mediaset Premium on September 22, 2016[54] and then aired as a free broadcast on Canale 5 from July 5, 2017.