Poor Detroit. First the scandal and resulting criminal charges involving the city’s mayor, and now “DEA,” the new Spike TV series that begins on Wednesday.

It follows a unit of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Detroit division, and here is how the opening narration sets the scene: “Half a million guns loose on the street. The highest murder rate in the country. It is a deadly city that the D.E.A.’s Group 14 calls home.” Not the kind of thing the city’s tourism bureau would put on a billboard.

The program, somewhat incongruously, is produced by Al Roker Entertainment — yes, the jolly weatherman — and that’s about the most interesting thing to be said about it. This being Spike TV, the show is heavy on the macho side of drug-enforcement work, light on the painstaking investigation and drudgery. But it’s all stuff you’ve seen before, in shows real and fictional: doors being bashed in by raiding officers; suspects being forced to the ground; plastic bags full of illegal this and that being displayed.

Looked at one way, the series is an argument that the trend of shows about real people doing their jobs ought to be put out of its misery. Every time one of these agents opens his mouth, you can more or less guess what’s going to come out, because when enough ordinary, TV-watching people become TV stars themselves, the clichés of script writing and the mundanities of daily conversation merge.

But viewed another way, the show might be thought of as a sort of extended public service announcement. With so much attention focused in recent years on the war on terror and the dangerous work being done by American soldiers, the main contribution of “DEA” may be to remind us that there is still a war on drugs being waged as well, with similar dangers and urgency.

DEA

Spike TV, Wednesday night at 11, Eastern and Pacific times; 10, Central time.

Al Roker, Russell Muth and Hank Capshaw, executive producers; Michael Kaufman, executive producer for Al Roker Entertainment; Tim Duffy, executive in charge of production for Spike TV. Produced by Al Roker Entertainment Inc. and Size 12 Productions.