Back at work

If anybody needed a good long summer break, it was detective Lilly Rush.

Last time we saw Kathryn Morris' homicide investigator on CBS's Cold Case, her alcoholic mother had just died. Her love life was as rumpled as her hairdo. And, oh yeah, she'd been shot.

But time, particularly on television, has a miraculous way of healing wounds. So, when season five of Cold Case premieres at 9 p.m. on Sunday, Detective Rush and her dedicated team of homicide sleuths will be back on the streets of Philadelphia, solving almost-forgotten murder cases.

Mended.

Physically, at least.

"This season, Rush is going to be dealing with the fallout of the shooting, and so are the others," said Veena Sud, one of the series' executive producers and the writer of the season-opening episode, "Thrill Kill," about a 1994 case of three teenagers wrongfully convicted of murder.

In Cold Case, the music is as important as the evidence, and this episode features Nirvana, the godfathers of grunge. In previous seasons, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen have been the flashback musical stars.

"For Lilly, her mother's death symbolizes many things," Sud said. "A closing of a chapter in her life, a need to move past some emotional issues."

She explained this as she peered at two flat-screen monitors, her command center during a recent all-day shoot in front of City Hall. Sud, along with the show's six principal actors and 20 members of the production crew, were in town for two days to film five street scenes that will appear in the first five episodes of the season.

Several producers and Tony Jannelli, the director of photography, scouted out the locations - the Swan Fountain on Logan Square, the area around City Hall, and the neighborhood at 19th and Parrish Streets - prior to the cast's arrival.

"We want to get the fabulous architecture, the character of the population, its diversity," Jannelli said. "Philadelphia is a huge, great, wonderful mix."

Holly Dale, director of one the episodes filmed during the recent visit, picked the elaborate stone exterior of the Grand Masonic Lodge on Broad Street.

"For the directors, it's a visual essay," Dale said. "In this show, Philadelphia is part of the story."

Cold Case travels east from Los Angeles twice a year - once in the summer and once in the winter - to infuse the series with urban authenticity. The traffic. The trash. The skyscrapers. The grit. The real deal.

But sometimes the Hollywood types get more Philly flava than they can handle.

In one scene, Kat (played by Tracie Thoms), Nick (Jeremy Ratchford), Will (Thom Barry), and Lilly were simply supposed to grab some coffee at a food truck and cross JFK Boulevard to the sidewalk on the north side of City Hall.

But after half a dozen rehearsals, repositioning of the cameras three times, and four run-throughs, the sequence, which will constitute about a minute of air time, took four hours to shoot.

In part that's because a real-life panhandler approached the actors at the fake lunch truck, asking for a buck, and a prankster pedestrian repeatedly shouted "Action!" to the actors, who, at least a couple of times, haplessly obeyed.

The final location of the afternoon was the spiral-staircase subway entrance at the west side of City Hall. There, one of the outdoor courtyard bench regulars, who gave his name only as Gordon, approached actor Danny Pino, who plays Lilly's partner, Scotty Valens.

Pino was taking a break about 40 feet away from the set, talking about the refreshing honesty of Philadelphians. (His cast-mate Ratchford said he'd once heard Philadelphians called the nicest rude people you'd ever want to meet.)

"There's a certain amount of telling-it-like-it-is here," Pino said. "People don't hesitate to talk to you, good or bad. They'll tell you the bad because it might do you some good to hear it. I love it, because it gives us a clear view of the world we're interpreting."

As if on cue, Gordon walked up and asked: "You know this show? The one they're doing here?"

Pino played dumb. "No."

"Cold Case," Gordon continued. "It's no good."

"Really?" Pino said. "How come?"

"Come on," Gordon replied with a sigh. "It's corny . . . when they do that face change thing, from young to old?"

Pino listened. Gordon continued his critique. Then, the director called Pino back to the set. He shook Gordon's hand, and walked away saying, "What did I tell you?"

Other onlookers were more enthusiastic. Elizabeth Foster, 26, and her mother, Patty Donaldson, visiting from Pittsburgh, are such big fans they stood and watched the shooting for more than three hours.

"This is so exciting," Donaldson said. "The crew has been so nice. When they ask you to move back, they are super polite about it."

Despite stiff time-period competition from Desperate Housewives and Sunday Night Football, Cold Case managed to hold its own in the ratings last season, attracting about 14 million viewers each week.

On the set, the stars did not disappear into their trailers during their short breaks. Instead, they posed for cell-phone photos with fans and politely signed autographs on everything from Starbucks napkins to ticket stubs from the King Tut exhibition. The actor in most demand, of course, was Morris, who, despite appearing in every shot, took the time to greet as many people as she could.

"I know this city and I love it," she said between takes. "It's really blossomed lately. It was a lot rougher when I lived here."

Morris, who grew up in Connecticut, attended Temple University as an undergrad in the late 1980s. She dropped out during her senior year and headed to California to start her acting career. Now, in addition to Cold Case, she's making feature films, the latest being Resurrecting the Champ, starring Samuel L. Jackson, Alan Alda and Josh Hartnett. (She plays Hartnett's wife.)

But on this sunny afternoon her full attention is on the new season of Cold Case, and Lilly Rush's fragile mental state.

"She comes back to work like usual, pretending that nothing happened," Morris said. "But when she was in the hospital, Lilly saw the beyond and she saw that she's alone."

Well, except for the panhandlers.