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Rescue Me centres around the fire-fighters of New York City's Truck Company 62. Tommy Gavin, a long-time FDNY firefighting veteran, leads the heroic but often overwhelmed group of Company 62 rescuers, but Tommy's own career and personal life are torn by the deaths of comrades and civilians in action.
Whether pulling survivors from high-rise infernos or the twisted steel of a subway collision, the fire-fighters of Company 62 revel in the adrenaline-pumping thrill of saving the lives of everyday New Yorkers - sometimes including their own comrades.
Gavin, grittily portrayed by Denis Leary (The Job, Wag The Dog), is a man drifting between sorrow and anger. Recently separated from his wife (Andrea Roth, Lucky) and their three kids, Gavin cannot shake recurring memories of comrades and everyday fallen New Yorkers. More than anything, Tommy Gavin is a veteran FDNY rescuer who is well known for giving incoming rookies brutally frank descriptions of the horrors he's seen and heroes he's known (and lost) during his many years in the department.
Working alongside hardened, gruff veterans like Lt. Kenny "Lou" Shea (John Scurti, Mona Lisa Smile), "Good" Chief Jerry (Jack McGee, Backdraft) and "Bad" Chief Ron Perroli (Michael Mulheren, The Curse Of The Jade Scorpion), Tommy and fellow fire-fighters Franco Rivera (Daniel Sunjata, All My Children) and Sean Garrity (Steven Pasquale, Platinum), must selflessly rescue anyone who's in danger - ranging from a crazed, bat-swinging drug addict to helpless elderly people and children trapped in a tenement apartment building blaze.
Their only respite from the daily grind comes in the humour from their good-natured hazing of rookies like Mike "The Probie" Silletti (Mike Lombardi, The Job), a probationary fire-fighter whose very life rests on how fast he can learn from his more experienced colleagues.
When the alarms sound at Company 62, Tommy and his crew are back on call to respond to emergencies, but Tommy cannot escape the ghostly visions of his late cousin Jimmy Keefe (James McCaffery, Cold Harbour), a fireman who was one of the many who died at the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001. Those haunting visitations from Jimmy, unfortunately, come in greater frequency and magnitude, and subsequently include other ghostly victims who Tommy was unable to save in various response calls. It only leads Tommy to further question the power of his faith, and to instead find comfort in a fifth of whiskey to ease his pain.
Tommy's personal life is-unquestionably-lost in an emotional blur, where he is finding that being back on the singles market isn't really as easy as his macho boasting would make it seem. Still, with his own unique brand of charm, wit and various wiles, Tommy has his share of one-night stands and various sexual escapades-including regular rendezvous with a woman whose name he can't seem to recall or get the courage to ask.
To put it mildly, Tommy is more than slightly obsessed with winning back his estranged wife Janet, who, to his great dismay, is dating a rich California businessman. But, Tommy is never far away from his estranged family-living directly across the street, where he deviously spies and plots to scare off any potential male suitors and win back the affection of Janet and their three kids.
Set amidst the housing projects and tenement buildings of Manhattan's Upper West Side, Rescue Me is a gritty and unvarnished look inside the world of Tommy Gavin and the rescuers of the New York City Fire Department. Leary and multiple Emmy Award-winning writer-producer Peter Tolan (The Larry Sanders Show, Murphy Brown) - the team behind the critically-acclaimed cop drama The Job - have re-teamed as creators, writers and executive producers of Rescue Me, distributed by Sony Pictures Television International.
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