Most current TV reality shows emphasize the worst aspects of human behavior — or, when it comes to the suspects dragged out of bed on Cops, the worst aspects of human anatomy. ABC News’ Boston 24/7, which gets up close and personal with public servants in the Hub, makes the crew on The West Wing look like the cast of Caligula. (The six-part documentary, with footage shot last year, airs at 10 p.m. starting this Tuesday.) If you live in Boston, watching this series should cure you of any fear that the police are going to bust down your door at 2 a.m. in a case of mistaken identity. But you may become convinced that Mayor Tom Menino is going to rouse you in the middle of the night and politely ask you to leave town, since you’re just not decent and dedicated enough to live here. At least he’ll let you put on a shirt before he escorts you to the bus terminal.

Okay, it is refreshing, after loathing the winners on such shows as Fear Factor and The Bachelor, to get moon-eyed about young prosecutor Tommy Kaplanes, who admits to 24/7 viewers, " I’m dealing with a horrific not-guilty streak. " The constantly smiling Kaplanes ( " I can laugh at myself " ) is perhaps the most appealing subject on the series, though crime victims might not be asking for him by name after this series airs. He’s caught unprepared for his first trial cases (one is dismissed because the victim never shows up), but he gamely vows to improve his performance, and one of the few recurring stories on 24/7 is the quest for his first guilty verdict — with a domestic-abuse case offering the best odds. Kaplanes also offers one of the sharpest distinctions between reality and the way certain professions are depicted on TV dramas. A character like this on The Practice would live in a fabulous loft, but Kaplanes has a tiny, clothes-strewn apartment, and he has to moonlight as a bartender to pay his bills.

Other noble but intriguing subjects include Pam Besold, a lesbian cop who says that she’s slowly being accepted by her peers but tells stories that indicate otherwise. (She admits there’s " a lot of archæological-dig kind of thinking " on the Boston police force.) Nurys Camargo is a victim’s advocate who calls herself a " fast-talking Latina chick " and tries to get battered women to go the distance in testifying against their abusers (most recant before getting to court). Homicide detective Danny Keeler investigates a decapitated body found in an East Boston apartment and laments the growing skepticism of juries toward the authorities: " The bar is so high for us today that they want a videotape of who did it. " And Boston Herald reporter Laurel Sweet covers car wrecks and plane crashes on the night beat, grimly observing that " everything I cover somehow involves bodies being strewn all over the place. "

Many of the scenes in Boston 24/7 are low-key, music-free versions of scenes familiar from the 10 p.m. dramas on the big networks. We see a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital (Joeli Hettler) tell parents that their daughter has leukemia, and it’s more affecting than anything on ER. We see high-school principal Chuck McAfee try to defuse a conflict between teacher and student (it involves a confiscated hat) that’s more disturbing than the histrionics on Boston Public. Practically all the subjects on Boston 24/7 play down the difficulties of their jobs — which, of course, only makes them seem more heroic.

The segments involving Mayor Menino, including much of the first hour, don’t work as well, partly because he seems out of place on a series that otherwise celebrates those on the streets rather than those in charge. (We never see the superintendent of schools, or the editor of the Herald.) The producers of Boston 24/7 also got stuck with two Menino-related stories that don’t pan out: a snowstorm that isn’t as bad as everyone predicted, and a re-election campaign that is never in doubt. It would have been preferable to learn more about the professionals that don’t show up often on TV dramas, such as retailers, small-business owners (plenty of potential headaches for them to deal with), and construction workers. (Nothing here on the Big Dig!) In the last two hours, we do get to meet Barbara Lynch, the chef at No. 9 Park, and rat catcher Chuck Tranito, who also moonlights as a chef, but by then Boston 24/7 has already established itself as a feel-good true-crime series. Fox has been feeding our collective paranoia with America’s Most Wanted for 14 years; ABC is trying to juice up its summer-season ratings by giving us Boston’s finest.