Instead, he wanted to find a way to make a show where a criminal was the one that was bringing the baddies to justice.
That sounds a lot like Whitey Bulger, the Boston crime lord who served as an informant for a number of years before later being becoming one of the FBI’s most wanted criminals, right?
Back when The Blacklist was still in the conceptual stages, showrunner and executive producer John Eisendrath was trying to find ways to create a crime show that didn’t fit into the typical mold of having a hero cop track down bad guys.