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For a short moment, it seems as if actors Josh Duhamel and Dean Winters have morphed into their odd-couple cop characters from Battle Creek.

On the phone from a frigid Toronto, where the two stars of the darkly funny crime series are talking with Canadian media, Duhamel and Winters were asked how much they knew about the titular Michigan town at the centre of the new CBS series. Both did research on the town. But one apparently did more than the other.

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“Josh can tell you, Josh went there … ” says Winters, who plays grizzled Battle Creek street cop Russ Agnew.

” … because I’m a committed actor,” says Duhamel, who plays the seemingly clean-cut and impeccably thorough FBI agent Milton Chamberlain. “Unlike some people on this phone call.”

The premise of mismatched crime fighters who question each other’s methods is hardly a new phenomenon on TV. But the fact that Battle Creek, which debuts on Global TV on Sunday, is brought to us by Breaking Bad golden boy Vince Gilligan has upped its cachet as a mid-season entry. Gilligan first wrote the script a decade ago, long before wowing critics with AMC’s ultimate anti-hero show. But Winters and Duhamel say it was the involvement of Gilligan and co-creator David Shore, the London, Ont.-born writer-producer who created House, that interested them from the outset. Their stamp is all over Battle Creek, which cheerfully breaks many of the commandments of cop shows.