I love a good cop
show.
I think it started
when I used to watch reruns of Adam 12, Hawaii 5-0, and The Streets of San
Francisco on Channel 13, during summer vacations.
Once I was in high
school I (of course) watched 21 Jumpstreet, (uh-hem) Alien Nation, and Miami
Vice. My palate still craved the cop show, but with a twist. All of these shows
had something different to offer from the Hill Street, NYPD blues, which I did
not have as much interest in…
Hill Street Blues really upset me because
James B. Sikking rarely got the good story lines. Yeah, yeah Renko and
Hill were great and it was super sad when Joe was killed, but at the time I did
not want as much of a “real life” kind of cop show.
No offense to Miami
Vice of course.
In my early twenties I
became a fan of “Forever Knight,” a vampire cop show. Was it the most highbrow
show? What do you think?
For some reason I
totally missed the boat with “The Shield” and I did not delve into “Homicide”
until I got into grad school and discovered that I love David Simon.
But before “Homicide,”
and “The Wire,” there was “Law and Order.”
Brisco is probably one
of my favorite television cops of all time. I will be super nerdy and rank my
top 5 detectives of L&O.
1.
Lenny Brisco
2.
Max Greevey
3.
Mike Logan
4.
Rey Curtis
5.
Ed Green
With an honorable
mention of Det. Kevin Bernard; his character had some Brisco kind of lines.
When I went back to
school, I needed TV to decompress. A friend of mine suggested “The Wire.” Not
to sound like everyone else who thinks that it is the best show ever, but I
loved it. Because of the “The Wire,” I watched David Simon’s 2 part miniseries “The
Corner,” “Generation Kill,” and “Treme.” They are all good, but “The Wire,” and
“Homicide: Life on the Street,” are my favorites. After my husband and I caught
up with the current season of “The Wire,” via Netflix we were both jonesing for
more. Once the final season was done, we were adrift. So it was natural for us
to move seamlessly into “Homicide.”
Pembleton, Munch,
Beau, Meldrick, Bayless, Falsone, Howard, Bolander, Crocetti, Giardello, and
Kellerman (and others whose names I can’t remember) were my new people. Even
though the show had been off the air almost a decade, the character study of
these cops along with some awesome crime fighting sucked us in for a couple of
months as we watched 122 episodes (and the not-so-great television movie).
Since then I watched “Southland,”
which was a decent show (Ryan from the OC, he is a great eye and forehead
actor) and “Detroit 187.” It is a shame that “Detroit” only lasted a season, it
was pretty good.
Besides the ones
mentioned the cop show had been integrated with specialty like the NCIS brand,
or cops played a secondary role to the forensic folks (see the CSI family), or
if I must the Hawaii 5-0 reboot. Yes, I watched it, but to me it is a little
too fluffy. It does look amazing in HD.
This whole thought
process was started because I was thinking about my new current cop show.
Longmire.
The show takes place
in Wyoming and Lou Diamond Phillips, and Starbuck (Katee Sackoff) are the
costars to Australian born actor, Robert Taylor. According to his Wikipedia
page, he has played a lot of detective roles and I think he is great as cowboy
sheriff Walt Longmire. LDP has always
been one of my favorites. I mean, hello! “Stand and Deliver,” “LaBamba,” and of
course he was Chavez in “Young Guns and YGII.” There are some Native American
storylines and how the local communities deal with big business. A few
storylines that have traveled through the 4 seasons of the show involve law
enforcement on the local reservation and how it interacts with the sheriff’s
department and so on. Yes, I realize that it is fiction, but it draws me in to
a place that is pretty to look at it and has the same kinds of crime, but often the writers of the show use different
means to an end. When the station they were on dropped it, I was sad. I would
once again be forced to search out a new cop show. Another service picked it up
and I think it is coming back for a 5th season.
I don’t watch a lot of
television, but I really like having my cop show.
