Information from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098772/

This show won two Primetime Emmys and was nominated for
three more, yet it only lasted one season.  It was a show
you either loved or hated.  I thought it was great which
is why I looked all over for it once I got into torrents
and the Usenet.  

Below are reviews from two commentators, both off the IMDB 
site indicated above.  Please note there are some scene
stealers in the second review so you might not want to
read more than halfway down :-)

In what must have been one of the shortest lived series on 
network television, "Cop Rock" was part "Real Stories of the 
Highway Patrol" and part "Sound of Music". After chasing down 
a criminal, the force would take to the street for an organized 
dance number, then haul the guy back to HQ. This may have been 
the only series to have been based on a broadway musical format.  
                 Written by Michael Silva <[email protected]> 
                 
                 
The 1990s started off with one of the boldest experiments ever 
attempted in American television # the creation of an hour-long 
weekly television police drama, done as a musical. Longtime 
tele-vision innovator Steven Bochco, creator of major hits like 
Hill Street Blues and L.A. Law, took the biggest risk of his 
career. He brought the musical back to television but this time 
as a gritty, street-wise cop show called Cop Rock. The songs 
were written by a stable of songwriters ably led by the Oscar-
winning Randy Newman. Half the critics thought it was the worst 
idea of the century; half thought it was pure genius. The 
television drama had been moribund for some time and Bochco 
created something entirely new, powerful, interesting, fresh. 
Nothing like it had ever been attempted before, and most 
importantly, it was done well and done seriously. Its 
detractors claimed it was unrealistic for cops and robbers to 
break into song, but none of them had complained quite this 
loudly about the various aliens that had appeared on the 
airwaves, about shipwrecked movie stars and millionaires, about 
bionic men and women, or about the rest of the lackluster crap 
filling the TV schedule. As an example of its audacity, its 
first episode alone included a rap song delivered by junkies as 
they're being arrested in a drug raid, a gospel number by a 
judge and jury convicting a drug dealer, a tender pop ballad by 
a husband about his much younger wife, and an R&B number by a 
corrupt lady mayor to the man who's just offered her a bribe. 
But the most powerful number came at the end of the episode. A 
young junkie sits on a bus stop bench singing a lullaby to her 
infant daughter, a haunting Randy Newman song called "Sandman" 
(later re-used in Newman's Faust). As she finishes the song, a 
station wagon pulls up, a man gets out and pays her $200 for 
the baby. As he drives away with the baby, the junkie finishes 
the lullaby and breaks down in tears as the music quietly ends 
and the camera pulls away. It was devastating. And it was 
brilliant drama. Unfortunately, it cost $1.8 million an episode 
# a record at the time # and its ratings were consistently 
dismal. ABC tried to get Bochco to drop the musical numbers but 
he refused, so they canceled the show after four months. Bochco 
later told Entertainment Weekly that of all his shows, Cop Rock 
was by far the most fun he had ever had making television. 
Years later, Cop Rock was partly redeemed as cable channel VH-1 
rebroadcast the series and a new generation discovered its 
quirky brilliance.                                          
                                    Written by [email protected]