By ADAM BUCKMAN

Finally, someone’s making a family drama for television that actually stands for something.

That someone is a producer/writer named Kathleen McGhee-Anderson, who is an executive producer (along with Kevin Hooks) of “Lincoln Heights,” premiering this week on ABC Family.

A native of Detroit who was educated at Spelman College and Columbia (where she received a masters in film directing), McGhee-Anderson has been involved for many years in producing and writing for TV shows and TV movies with “urban” (or black) themes – “Soul Food,” “South Central,” “Any Day Now,” “Educating Matt Waters” (starring Montel Williams), even “227” and “Benson.”

Her latest is this new, original drama about a middle-class African-American family in L.A.

Dad Eddie Sutton (Russell Hornsby) is a uniformed member of the Los Angeles Police Department and mom Jenn (Nicki Micheaux) is a registered nurse.

They have three kids – younger teens Tay (Mishon Ratliff) and Lizzie (Rhyon Brown) and older teen Cassie (Erica Hubbard).

As the series opens, they’re all living in a cramped apartment until the LAPD inaugurates an incentive program aimed at persuading its patrolmen to actually live in the precincts they patrol.

Under the program, the department will buy and pay for the renovation of a large, old home within the city limits. The catch is: The homes available are in sketchy neighborhoods.

One such neighborhood is Lincoln Heights, where patrolman Eddie Sutton decides to move his family. It’s a pretty rough area (their renovated home was just recently the neighborhood crack den), but it is also where Eddie grew up, and he dreams of helping to fix the neighborhood’s problems.

While the premise might sound sappy, the show isn’t. The problems in “Lincoln Heights” – poverty, drugs, crime, gang rule – are not going to be solved overnight.

In fact, in the first two episodes, Officer Sutton gets in hot water with community activists after fatally shooting a well-liked neighborhood youth (who just happened to be participating in a botched grocery-store robbery).

The primary reason the show works is because of its casting. Anchored by Hornsby and Michaeux (who sharp-eyed viewers will remember as a tough undercover cop on “The Shield”), this is a made-for-TV family that really feels like one – a rarity for TV drama.

It is also rare for such a finely made TV show to come along this early in the new year.

LINCOLN HEIGHTS

Monday, 7 p.m., ABC Family

via New York Post