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    #26
    The Golden Age of US Cop Shows

    Renart wrote:
    David Simon's Homicide: Life on the Street was another good cop show I forgot.
    Can't believe it took a full page for this to get a notice. Homicide was fantastic. And not just because it made the Wire better, either. Andre Braugher was consistently amazing all the way through the show, and the Bayliss-Pembleton relationship was possibly the best love story of the 90s.

    And, of course, several episodes of the Wire are much funnier if you saw Homicide. The evolution of Clayton LeBeouf from chief of Police to strip club owner was pretty funny.

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      #27
      The Golden Age of US Cop Shows

      NYPD Blue isn't getting enough (any) credit in this thread. In many ways, it is the link between Hill Street Blues (which was remarkably innovative for its time) and the David Simon shows on HBO.
      Well, Gramsci has pretty much made the point I was going to make in the preceding post: I'd say that Homicide is at least equal to NYPD Blue in that claim.

      And the Western/cop show thing mentioned earlier finds contemporary expression in Justified, I think.

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        #28
        The Golden Age of US Cop Shows

        Now that I've determined that each series started in 1993, I'd agree with that, though I can tell you that NYPD Blue generated much more "buzz" here at the time, and that Blue's commercial success was cited by NBC in its decision to keep Homocide going despite lousy ratings (Homocide also had shorter seasons than Blue).

        I'd also agree that Homocide was the better show over its entire arc.

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          #29
          The Golden Age of US Cop Shows

          Garamczy Antal wrote:
          And, of course, several episodes of the Wire are much funnier if you saw Homicide. The evolution of Clayton LeBeouf from chief of Police to strip club owner was pretty funny.
          Ha, that's right! I need to watch Homicide again.

          Yaphet Kotto is great in it, too. He hasn't done much since, has he?

          Comment


            #30
            The Golden Age of US Cop Shows

            He lives in the Philippines most of the time, which probably leaves him out of the loop a fair bit. He also writes books and screenplays. I remember a interview saying how much he disliked working on Homicide because he had almost nothing to do.

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              #31
              The Golden Age of US Cop Shows

              I haven't seen any Homicide - though it may be time to remedy that - but loved Yaphet Kotto's turn in Midnight Run. Any similarity in the characters?

              Orson Welles was the voice of Robin Masters in the early series of Magnum PI. It probably stands as one of the more artistically valid ventures of his final years.

              Apparently the great man's death and subsequent unavailability was one reason behind the producers pursuing the ridiculous 'Is Higgins really Robin Masters?' thread in the show's final seasons. By that point in the UK it was being shown ever closer to midnight if at all, at the discretion of the regional broadcasters.

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                #32
                The Golden Age of US Cop Shows

                I'm currently working my way through Homicide: Life on the Street (7 Series & 1 Film on36 DVDs).

                Was overshadowed by NYPD Blue at the time but was far more realistic (apparently).

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                  #33
                  The Golden Age of US Cop Shows

                  Homicide was great.

                  I never thought of The Wire as a cop show, although I suppose it is. It's kind of a genre of its own.

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                    #34
                    The Golden Age of US Cop Shows

                    Renart wrote:
                    Yaphet Kotto is great in it, too. He hasn't done much since, has he?
                    First saw him in Alien and he was good in that.

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                      #35
                      The Golden Age of US Cop Shows

                      He really burst on the scene in Live and Let Die.

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                        #36
                        The Golden Age of US Cop Shows

                        Amor de Cosmos wrote:
                        He lives in the Philippines most of the time, which probably leaves him out of the loop a fair bit. He also writes books and screenplays. I remember a interview saying how much he disliked working on Homicide because he had almost nothing to do.
                        Interesting. He's one of the actors who, for me, have an interesting on-screen presence even if they're not playing a particularly challenging role. (Robert Mitchum is another.)

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                          #37
                          The Golden Age of US Cop Shows

                          He's definitely a cat who walks his own road. As a young actor he was mentored by Judy Holliday — which gave me real a double take, partly because she's among my top five movie actresses of all time, and partly because a more dissimilar duo I couldn't imagine.

                          Comment


                            #38
                            The Golden Age of US Cop Shows

                            Reed John wrote

                            I never thought of The Wire as a cop show, although I suppose it is. It's kind of a genre of its own.
                            Neither did I, which was why I didn't mention it in my posts. Someone else of this opinion:

                            “Swear to God, it was never a cop show. And though there were cops and gangsters aplenty, it was never entirely appropriate to classify it as a crime story, though the spine of every season was certain to be a police investigation in Baltimore, Maryland...The Wire was not about Jimmy Mcnulty. Or Avon Barksdale. Or Marlo Stanfield, or Tommy Carcetti or Gus Haynes. It was not about crime...it was about the City.

                            The first series...was a dry deliberate argument against drug prohibition..

                            The second series was even more of a lighthearted romp: a treatise about the death of work and the betrayal of the working class..

                            Season Three? A rumination on our political culture and the thin possibility of reform...

                            [In Season Four] the stage is set for viewers to coldly contemplate the state of public education and, by extension, the American ideal of equality of opportunity...

                            ...Season Five, a last reflection on why these worlds endure...a depiction of what remains of our media culture...


                            David Simon, Prologue, in Rafael Alvarez: The Wire: Truth Be Told, UK ed, Canongate Books, 2009.

                            I recommend this book: a mixture of articles and series overviews, by the creators of the show (Alvarez himself is one).

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                              #39
                              The Golden Age of US Cop Shows

                              Y Koto was quite good in "Blue Collar" too.

                              Well, no one mentionned it but "Miami Vice" was a kick in the cojones to the routine...I adored it...

                              Comment


                                #40
                                The Golden Age of US Cop Shows

                                ursus arctos wrote:
                                Now that I've determined that each series started in 1993, I'd agree with that, though I can tell you that NYPD Blue generated much more "buzz" here at the time
                                There was quite a buzz in the UK too from what I recall. It was aired on C4 on Saturday nights and there was a fair bit of newspaper coverage about the grittiness of the show and the fallibility of some of its characters.

                                Comment


                                  #41
                                  The Golden Age of US Cop Shows

                                  Renart wrote:
                                  David Simon's Homicide: Life on the Street was another good cop show I forgot.
                                  I would have to go with The Wire, Hill Street Blues, and then Homicide. I missed Homicide when it was on TV but read a lot about how great the show was so picked up the full series box set when I came into a coupon for 50% off a box set and it was already on sale. But I keep forgetting to finish the series. I am torn, though, between which I prefer: Yaphet Kotto the actor or Yaphet Kotto the band.

                                  The Wire is the best, though. Just a brilliant, brilliant show.

                                  Comment


                                    #42
                                    The Golden Age of US Cop Shows

                                    Kojak was the cop show I liked the most - even my old man enjoyed that one. And the 'gimmicks' just made the show more entertaining, IMO. (Why are they considered such a 'negative' thing on this thread?)

                                    However, if you're looking for one from Streets Of San Francisco, then probably its rather pompous use of the 'epilogue'. Another pretty decent hour, though. As was Columbo.

                                    In retrospect, though, Starsky & Hutch was pants. Crime drama for the teenyboppers.

                                    And the theme tune to A Man Called Ironside used to freak out my Siamese cat.

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                                      #43
                                      The Golden Age of US Cop Shows

                                      Does 'Petrocelli' count? It was more 'legal drama' than 'cop show'. Did he ever get his house finished?

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                                        #44
                                        The Golden Age of US Cop Shows

                                        Jah Womble wrote:

                                        However, if you're looking for one from Streets Of San Francisco, then probably its rather pompous use of the 'epilogue'.
                                        That was a characteristic of a lot of Quinn Martin's productions. See also The Invaders, The Fugitive, 12 O'Clock High, amongst others.

                                        I've been working my way through the Kojak box sets recently. The lollipops and catchphrases aren't laid on quite as thick as you'd expect, possibly becoming a bit more obvious by season 3.

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                                          #45
                                          The Golden Age of US Cop Shows

                                          I agree that the The Wire isn't a cop show. And yet it's ruined cop shows for me. I can't watch them any more, with their neat little puzzles and neat little resolutions. Even Homicide, which went in for less of that, is kind of soap-y, by all accounts because of what the studio demanded.

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                                            #46
                                            The Golden Age of US Cop Shows

                                            Bit pointless, this post, but for years I had a theme song in my head and couldn't place it. I could remember hearing it down the hall as I was dozing off at night when I was quite young.

                                            It was this, which I only figured out last year. Makes sense, as my dad was a big Columbo fan.

                                            It won't surprise you that it was the ghostly whirring synth sound that bored its way into my grey matter.

                                            What a great idea for a show though: rotate through 3 or 4 different mystery shows under one umbrella of a 'mystery movie'. Seems to have worked at the time but I can't think of any other example of it being done.

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                                              #47
                                              The Golden Age of US Cop Shows

                                              Why at Last! wrote:
                                              I agree that the The Wire isn't a cop show. And yet it's ruined cop shows for me. I can't watch them any more, with their neat little puzzles and neat little resolutions. Even Homicide, which went in for less of that, is kind of soap-y, by all accounts because of what the studio demanded.
                                              I don't understand what you mean by soap-y, exactly. Happy endings, you mean? Because Homicide was often the nastiest and most challenging thing on TV.

                                              The episode where a child shot randomly in a shopping mall is brain dead and the parents make the decision to pull the plug and they show them doing it and hugging them as he passes away is the most difficult scenes I've ever seen on network TV. The episode where Vincent D'Onofrio is caught between a train and the platform and will die as soon as the train is moved was also out of this world. Robin Williams' (don't laugh) turn as a tourist whose wife is killed in a mugging was also pretty good.

                                              Either season 5 or 6 (can't remember) of Homicide was pretty clearly a dry-run for the Wire. They had a full-season arc about two of the cops - one of them being Lewis, who became Gus in Wire Season 5 and who also directed the first two episodes ever of the Wire - going after a drug dealer (can't remember the dude's name - Luther something - but he was the medical examiner in the Wire). His character was somewhat Stringer-ish in that he spent a lit of time putting up a front of being legit and donation to charities, etc. But, being a cop show, there was nothing of the dynamics within the drug organization.

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                                                #48
                                                The Golden Age of US Cop Shows

                                                That Luther bad guy was too cartoonish for my taste; but by then Homicide was on the slide. Some of the new cops in the latter series were unconvincing; Mike Kellerman was great, but his demise seemed a bit soapy, and Gharty was a welcome addition. But that Falsone chap, the woman and the black female detective were just rubbish.

                                                Evil Luther belongs more in the line-up of Dexter baddies.

                                                Comment


                                                  #49
                                                  The Golden Age of US Cop Shows

                                                  I was a big fan of 77 Sunset Strip, especially the theme song with the snappy fingers, Cookie and his comb, the big Ford Galaxy convertible they drove around in. Very impressive to my ten year old self. Made me want to move to LA. But Warner Bros have never put it into syndication, so I have no idea how it stands up.

                                                  Ah, cumawn WaL, the gimick's the thing. Kojack, lolly pop and all is the dog's Bollocks. Hawaii Five O. with Steve "Book him, Dano" McGarret's ultra cool pompador. Robert Blake's budgie in Baretta. Columbo's old battered Peugeot in flashy car crazy LA. And who the hell ever wears a raincoat in LA?

                                                  Rockford Files was ace. Probably my all time favorite crime show. Also impressive was that Columbo and Rockford solved crimes without recourse to guns blazing.

                                                  Barney Miller was more sit-com than straight up cop show but it had the one and only Abe Vigoda as Det Phil Fish. Quite possibly my favorite TV cop.

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                                                    #50
                                                    The Golden Age of US Cop Shows

                                                    I have a huge nostalgia for 'Kojak'. At the time it seemed so gritty and realistic (and downbeat, noirish etc) compared to other cop shows. Massive saturday night treat, when I were a lad. The credits alone were exciting.

                                                    With hindsight it maybe took the aesthetics of blaxploitation cinema and shoehorned them into an 'ethnic' cop show.

                                                    I ought to get one of my serial-downloader friends to get me some Kojak action....unless anyone knows of a tv station that reruns them (I don't see why not when you look at some of the 'Gold' on the far end of the Sky listings)

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