POLICE PROCEDURALS - which are ur faves

books, movies, tv, comics, anything

any nationality

looking specifically for *police* procedurals here, but if a private detective mystery is really good i guess u can post it

Used to love the Ed McBain books when I was a kid, don't know if they're actually any good. Homicide: Life on the Street, the Wire, duh.

does colombo count

Real-life police officers have raised the issue that such dramas fail to focus on the paperwork that many in law enforcement must deal with.[citation needed]

the dramas would definitely be a lot more exciting if they focussed on more paperwork

oh yeah and the book "Homicide" too

colombo is a city in sri lanka so no, it doesnt count

commish for all time

the naked gun

i like murder, she wrote. the song and the tv show.

robocop

the Richard Fleischer/Tony Curtis movie of The Boston Strangler

Fish Police

colombo is a city in sri lanka so no, it doesnt count

― fleetwood (max), Thursday, August 27, 2009 10:12 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

hey max i found a cool picture of you

http://www.smartypantsworld.com/images/smarty-pants-new-front-page.jpg

Clockers + Wambaugh + (at least as a teenager) Gregory McDonald's Flynn books.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAidnO64NE4

M is my fave police procedural ever but they're all good.

Night and the City, to state the ridiculously obvious.

I like a show called Laws And Orders, you should check it out.

just bought 'homicide' the book after lunch, iirc

Does Cracker count?

just got 'homicide' from the library, iirc

the book is really good.

I finished it a few weeks ago. And yes it is!

just discovered this series, have read two and have two more on deck. moody, atmospheric, compelling. martin is one melancholy cop

Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö were husband and wife. They were both committed Marxists and, between 1965 and 1975, they collaborated on ten mysteries featuring Martin Beck.

Series
Martin Beck (Per Waloo with Maj Sjöwall)
1. Roseanna (1965)
2. The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (1966)
3. The Man on the Balcony (1967)
4. The Laughing Policeman (1968)
5. The Fire Engine That Disappeared (1969)
6. Murder at the Savoy (1970)
7. The Abominable Man (1971)
8. The Locked Room (1972)
9. Cop Killer (1974)
10. The Terrorists (1975)

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_GI8idJ1yqWM/Rhc8aJ9RDiI/AAAAAAAAAsU/bb67qQcdTVY/s320/high-and-low(albany.edu).jpg

(Plus it's based on an Ed McBain book.)

Also, and to my eternal shame, Anne Perry's Victorian police procedurals are pretty fun to read.

really liked the ian rankin rebus books and prime suspect + mcmillan and wife.

those martin beck books are dope

put this on some other thread but: i watched the first two red riding movies. second was better than the first but both are too heavy handed--i think the best police shows/movies/books usually have a pretty good (if gruesome) sense of humor. still, well-acted and really beautifully shot (they remind me a little of the bbc wallander series)

Rewatching Homicide season 1 this weekend. Sooooooooo good, soooooooo bleak. Network television should be ashamed of itself for promoting so much regressive procedural trash that stands up like a limp noodle in comparison to an awesome cop show that aired over 15(!) years ago.

BOYCOTT COP CULTURE!!!

So as I said in the other thread, I am enjoying Dogs of Riga by Henning Mankell.

last prime suspect totally destroyed me

Brubaker/Rucka/Lark's Gotham Central comic is A+++.

Jack Reacher novels for the guilty admission.

George Pelecanos "The Night Gardener"

if you liked homicide (the book) or other non-fiction books about crime and police you might like cop in the hood, i dunno

http://www.copinthehood.com/

anyone been watching the new bbc detective show "zen"? i had such high hopes - the books, by michael dibdin, are fantastic, it was being made by the same production company that did such a great job on wallander - but it's awful. unbelievably clunky dialogue (a police chief that says: "I WANT RESULTS!"), plots unaccountably ruined to remove all the elements of mystery, characterisation that consists of people saying, "you've got quite a reputation for integrity, detective" (which gets the character all wrong anyway). couldn't even finish episode 2.

Who writes the books? Not familiar with them.

speaking of bbc policiers i saw one episode of luther and well i liked it well enough i suppose but not enough to watch the second one

rockapads - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Dibdin

he died a few years ago, only 60. the zen novels - he wrote a few other things which i haven't read yet - are very stylishly written by the standards of crime fiction, have a really persuasive sense of place and politics and can be very funny, everything that the bbc adaptation isn't.

xpost luther gets better after ep 1, but not that much better.

also for some reason i watched all of the george gentlys, which were kind of silly but martin shaw is so great

thanks, joe

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100225195706AAVtKcA

air force one

The police part comes in with the air battle

I watched the movie on Netflix!

Lots of great Scandinavian PP:

Henning Mankell
Ake Edwardson
Arnaldur Indridason
Karin Fossum

Also love Japanese PP, but maybe not everyone's cup of tea:

Takagi Akimitsu
Matsumoto Seicho

cancelled cop shows that i have watched (at least two of which have zeljko ivanek playing CREEPY MURDERERS or at least suspects):

life
damian price as a cop who was framed for murder and who re-joins his unit after he's freed so he can find the real killers, who framed him, root out corruption, whatever. he picked up self-help zen in prison and now walks around bewildering people with zen tidbits (pretty funny ones, imo). sarah shahi as his partner, adam arkin as his live-in accountant buddy, robin weigert as the captain in the first season and donal logue in the second. a bit thin on re-viewing - too much music and too many 'driving to the next scene' scenes.

the inside
fbi profilers that track serial killers - rachel nichols as a young, possibly unstable / untested profiling savant, peter coyote as a sadistic psychological-expert lead agent, adam baldwin, some other people. tim minear show. actually creepy, and the last episode is disturbing/cartoonish. some good gallows humor. a nice serious amount of PROCEDURE, too.

k-ville
anthony anderson playing it by the seat of his pants in post-katrina new orleans. who doesn't like anthony anderson?

new amsterdam
a dude in 1600s n.y. saves some girl's life and becomes immortal, so he spends 400 years being a detective; mostly present-day with some cuts back while he broods about his past. lots of brooding, lots of moody shots. he has a middle-aged black man who is his son that KNOWS HIS SECRET. he runs into beautiful women who he considers telling his secret to. really kind of a vampire cop show without actual vampires.

touching evil
remake of (boring) u.k. cop show on u.s.a. but actually good for a u.s.a. show - jeffrey donovan is an fbi (or whatever they call it? osi?) serial crimes agent who has just come back on duty after taking a bullet in the head and kind of losing it (he is still pretty off). vera farmiga (!!!!) is his partner, zack grenier is the boss, some other people around, like pruitt taylor vince as an unstable dude that creegan befriends after he's a suspect in an early case (a good role, i think), and a bit of bradley cooper. really moody - a bit of an x-files vibe, especially with all the pacific northwest / no-cal settings and deranged killings. at first i thought it was really engrossing but later the plots did seem a little bit preposterous - basically everyone involved gets SUPER quickly caught up in cases / too close to a victim / too close to a criminal / breaks the rules, in turn, like everyone in the unit starts out messed up by all the shit they see and you don't have time to run through any 'cop life is wearing me down' plots. apart from that preposterousness, though, good writing and acting, nice look.

the unusuals
'quirky' cop show by denis leary or his people or whoever - jeremy renner and amber tamblyn as the leads, adam goldberg and michael from lost (but actually pretty good) as partners, and monique gabriela curnen (!) and some dude as partners, terry kinney as the sergeant, some other good parts. basically, a contemporary homage to goofy-cop-hijinx shows of days of yore, only with a layer of leary-style staring-into-the-abyss-of-public-service despair, except that it's all sentimental. at first the 'quirk' grates and doesn't seem all that funny but it helps them build up some heart and a strong sense of style, which is kind of something to appreciate after watching a csi rerun. lots of cops zingin on cops scenes, well-handled plots but not a lot of PROCEDURE.

boomtown
l.a. setting, 'same crime, different viewpoints' - awfully nbc-looking. really the main thing i ever remember is this dude, and i assume he plays a douche, but that may just be because i saw him playing a douche once and he just looks like he must always get douchey roles.

day break
like groundhog day, except taye diggs is a cop who wakes up every day being framed for a crime that he's trying to solve somehow before they catch him at the end of the day. meta golding, adam baldwin, mitch pileggi. i honestly can't remember anything about it except that it's pretty fast-paced (dude is probably pretty jacked, after all, he keeps waking up and running for his life).

l.a. dragnet
ed o'neill being dragnet dude. very PROCEDURAL, not full of extras like seasonal arcs and goofy concepts. nice and grim if i remember - it's been a while. and voiceover!

cancelled cop show i would like to watch;

robbery homicide division - is it any good?

yes, it is, if you like michael mann

Mail readers are thick shocker. They used the same device on the 2 preceding series. It can be an effective wrapper up if used right but seemed to be over some very ham acting here.
Not sure where it's first used in drama but do remember Animal House used it back around 35 or whatever years back. & documentaries use it so it is an idea that's around to borrow, innit?

Jackie admitting she wouldn't have minded or whatever she says under the bridge is really questionable isn't it. Would think that even if she was that poor in taste it would be the last thing she'd admit it under the circumstances. Was there any detectable chemistry between the 2?

Her name's Kate, btw.

J

Jackie was the blonde one in Danny's team.

Ok then Kate. Still seemed a bit naff. Unless it was advanced terrorist negotiating skills or something. Thought it would be the last thing she'd want to say.

Did like the actress that played Kate when she was in This is England. Think I felt a lot less sympathy for her in this. But still, that guy seemed a bit of a tosser.

Think it's been said but is it likely that all the Caddy profile would be dictated by Cottan as it was in this? Also the ineptness of his other cover ups. The bounced email for one.
Seemed like some things were overly facile and supposedly covered over by him growling. Which is a bit egomaniacal isn't it?

The profiling "hi dere, I have uncovered a profile which is basically IT'S STEVE ARNOTT" was a dreadful plot device - no evidence as to how that profile had been drawn up. I mean, it's fair enough that as the senior officer he'd get to be in charge of it, but surely he'd have some background rather than a four-bullet-point presentation pointing the finger squarely at Steve?

There was a bit of chemistry between Kate & Dot when she went to his flat, but I'm not sure if that was genuine or whether she was "undercover" then, as she'd gone over Ted's head to authorise some investigation of a fellow AC-12 officer.

I did wonder when she became suspicious of him. I thought the investigation that she had to go elsewhere for the go ahead for might have been Hastings seeming to be subject to Masonic influence.

Watched a couple fo Jack Taylor episodes on Alibi cos it's an Irish Private Eye show filmed here in Galway. It stars that guy who plays the aging swordsman in GoT that follows Daenerys half way across the world only to be turning into stone.

Not sure how old it is cos I saw part of it being filmed on the other side of the park here a few months ago. but could be it's on a 2nd series or something.

Kind of gritty I suppose but it is contained within a semi small town type of city instead of a really 21st century looking one.
Interesting to see locations being used. Also to see how the geographical location has been slightly altered. So a building around the corner from the University is now miles out on a country lane. But I guess you're likely to get that in most things if you know the actual physical locations. Doesn't one of the Dirty Harrys have chases taking part in locations on opposite side of the city that look like they're supposed to be next to each other?

Yeah, the Caddy profile stuff reminded me of Roger Ebert's "idiot plot" concept. ("Any plot containing problems that would be solved instantly if all of the characters were not idiots.") Even infallible Ted seemed like a bit of a credulous shmuck at the end.

Who wouldn't love Ted as a boss, though? He cares *so* much.

Aw you guys are just picking holes for the sake of it now. Dot was a hero and yes Ted was blind to the shoddy basis of the profile because of it. We all know office heroes whose work always seems to get waved through regardless of how thin it actually is. And Dot's stitch-up job on Arnott in the first half was just deliciously evil, like the bigger the lie, the more people will believe it.

But yeah when the worm finally started turning, I can't remember the last time I yelled at the TV in approbation that much, mainly after something Ted had said.

Steve getting arrested because of a PowerPoint slide was bit ridic. And surely Dot would have been better off just pocketing the envelope and forgetting the frame-up idea?

I mean, these holes are fun to discuss but they didn't affect my enjoyment of the shows.

I was trying to remember and probably should have just gone back and watched teh end of teh last episode fo the first series. But is there not a comment that Dot makes there to somebody other than Tommy about how he got into the police after starting out as a caddy and being mentored by somebody. Thought it was something that had been said more publicly or to one of the other cops which might have been something taht came back to someone.
Or taht it might be something taht was known about or showed up on a CV for him. but didn't turn out that way.

Who wouldn't love Ted as a boss, though? He cares *so* much.

Yeah, totally. Bit unlikely that Steve was reinstated after the evidence he'd crossed the line with Denton though.

JUst wondering if this was done knowing that the first series would be followed by a second that built on it and so on.
Just could swear that Dot told somebody about how he satrted in the police force at the end of that firs season and presumably that was before he went in to see Tommy.
So wondering if the plotting was set up to build on top of things that were established earlier or if somebody just came along and roughly viewed some existing threads and built on them.

Will try and rewatch that episode end.

I just found the place where he does say that he came in through caddying at a golf course. It's to the dark haired higher up in the scene in the car park straight after an injured Steve has had the meeting in the car with the fugitive Gates.
Not sure how bright that guy was or if he remains in the show much longer after that, & it is in passing in a momentary conversation but would have thought the guy if t was anybody else might just have remembered that he'd actually said it.
Unfortunately he's the only person who hears it at the time and he may have never seen it as anything other than anecdotal. Think the guy wasa bit one dimensional from what I can recall of him.

It's in the same conversation where this guy has asked dot if he'd be interested in sitting the Inspector exam. & says taht it isn't pleasant to step into9 a dead man's shoes.
Thought I'd remembered it throughout the next couple of seasons but couldn't remember exactly who it was said to.

jesus christ second season of Broadchurch was awful, what a waste of 8 hours.

― akm, Friday, February 27, 2015 6:51 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Didn't think it was that bad, to be honest.

i've definitely wasted more time on worse.

Does "Trapped" fit this thread's remit?

Midway through, it does seem very good.

Trapped was great! My favourite police this year.

I've got one more episode to go and I'd say it is up there with the Killing and the Bridge. Better than Fortitude.

gah so i'm going to have to steal this clearly

Just watched 5 episodes straight of Trapped, yeah I'm feeling this, despite certain tropes. I also enjoyed that Swedish one I forget the name of which was like a police procedural about kidnapped children but with added FOREST SPIRITS or whatever, with the same conspiracy amongst small town elders covering up something in order to sell out to BIG BUSINESS. I mean, I'm only halfway through Trapped, but c'mon...

Jordskott? Enjoyed it though it was a bit "X-Files" for me.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/08/22/londons-super-recognizer-police-force

bound to be yoinked for a procedural

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/arts/mike-connors-mannix-dies.html?_r=0

In the series, which had its premiere in 1967, Mr. Connors played Joe Mannix, a Korean War veteran of, like Mr. Connors, Armenian descent who sleuthed his way around Los Angeles with flashy cars and a penchant for citing Armenian proverbs.

Unlike many a smooth TV private eye, Mannix took his lumps. The Washington Post, tabulating the wear and tear the character withstood over eight seasons, found that he had endured 17 gunshot wounds and 55 beatings that left him unconscious.

The violence drew criticism in some quarters, but “Mannix” became the most popular crime series on television in an era punctuated by comedies like “All in the Family” and “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.” Mr. Connors became one of the highest-paid television actors of the 1970s, and the role brought him four Emmy Award nominations and a Golden Globe Award.

So ... two more episodes until the very end of Broadchurch.

How on earth did we never have a Broadchurch thread? Have I lost all my search skills?

I'M NOT IN THE MOOD FOR YOUR NOISE THIS MORNIN

The Kojack pilot, The Marcus-Nelson Murders--a made-for-TV movie, technically, directed by Joseph Sargent, who did The Taking of Pelham One Two Three a year later--is excellent. Unfortunately, you can't buy it as a standalone.

David tennant looks horrible with facial hair

Good thread, will have to check out some of j's cancelled cop shows (I did see the one about the guy from 1600s NYC, with good but too-brief flashbacks).
A few years ago, my local antenna TV selections incl. very late-night reruns of a couple shows I barely remember from early childhood: Peter Gunn, with a badass instrumental theme song, my first musical experience. Also, going to cigarette commenricals: warm-cool prob hollow-body electric guitar notes, a scale maybe, against Modern Art patterns, with a slicked-haired gumshoe, who looked like an ex-cop, but welcome in the jazz clubs. SCTV's version had him actually up on the bandstand, spying suspects during his sax solos, which was pretty close to Jack Dragnet Webb's movie Pete Wilson's Blues, where he's a bandleader and an informer (LAPDphile Webb was also married to chanteuse Julie London, hubba-hubba).
The other Antenna TV resurrection was Naked City, which started in the late 50s as a relatively tame savvy old-cop. collegiate young cop reduction of the late 40s movie of the same title--which had more spirit and flavor, not noir but kinda Hollywood neo-realist in the funky streets of NYC, which the revamped series updated with some New Frontier exuberance and sensitive liberal melodrama---and as an anthology series, basically, with cops mainly just chasing or coming to the rescue of guest stars, who got most of the action.
Cracker and Prime Suspect are forever, but yall know those. (First series of prequel PS was good except the young Jane is pretty reserved, almost meek, in a way the young *Helen Mirren* never was, like in that movie directed by Michael Powell, her first, I think)

re ageless-detective show, there was just another one of those recently! already canceled i think. i read that the creator swore he wasn't aware of the previous one.

Marcella, series 2, the last 15 minutes, urgh.

I’m probably the only one watching Collateral on NFlix but it’s enjoyable and has my girl Carey in it

kathleen robertson's shoulders are amazing and she has lots of good tuck-hair-behind-ears moments

i totally forgot this show that i watched all of existed until i read this again

the j-lo dirty cop show with ray liotta ('man with large appetites') is decent but i dunno it was getting a bit much as the second season kicked in so i gave up on it for the time being

Collateral was ok, although I have probably muddled it up with the 3000 other things of the same ilk I've watched recently.

(Oh, the pizza guy, the refugees). Carey good, yes.

Yeah it’s purely a time sink. Only watching for Carey

i can't believe they literally had one fbi profiler explain to another on their own same team what exactly rohypnol is and its typical criminal uses in 2005, with zero self-consciousness on the part of the writers

criminal minds has to be the lamest nominally successful police procedural of the past 20 years

Season 2 of broadchurch is weird

Why on earth is danny’s father replicating his son’s killer’s behavior—meeting privately with the young boy?

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/rinko-kikuchi-star-michael-mann-hbo-max-series-tokyo-vice-1282655

aaaahhhhh yes please will watch

but wtf is hbo max?

who knows, stealing it anyway

otm

Mare Of EastTown is v good so far

Kate Winslets character reminds me a bit of Happy Valley main character ie beaten down divorced cop grandmother w dead kid

the story is different but has that kind of vibe, bleakness & good writing but more wry humor in this

also guy pearce doing a+ silver fox work as always

literally everyone is suspicious & fairly convincingly so, def scratches a whodunnit itch if you have one

(on hbomoax, 2 eps up so far, weekly)

yeah this is great, except for the montage showing the local kids all being interviewed which was really jarring in tone, like something out of a quirky indie comedy. But I'm in this for the long haul