POLICE PROCEDURALS - which are ur faves

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

i mean its more or less exactly what youd expect of a michael mann produced cop show, lots of shaky hd video, lots of jaws being set

lots of tom sizemore

I like the John Harvey - Charlie Resnick crime novels.

Set in Nottingham, lots of day to day paper work and office politics + serial killers.

i liked boomtown, but we never got to see (the aborted) series 2 here in the uk. (but your post has made me search amazon for it and dvds exist for series 1, so that's good)

you know what would kill, a prime suspect redux six years into retirement where it's nothing but jane going to AA meetings

i was falling asleep on nyquil at the time, so this may not be real, but i thought i saw an ad for one last night that was titled something like

niwb:od:lks

those arent the right letters, but that was the formatting. was i just high or is that some crazy new show?

Apparently it was this, and apparently I was already halfway out the door to dreamland to not notice that it was a spoof.

http://www.adultswim.com/presents/ntsfsdsuv/index.html

"the fall" on netflix/bbc2 is quite good i thought

starring gillian anderson/barristan selmy/roose bolton

max have you read anything by Joe Gores? He wrote a series of skip tracer/repoman procedurals centered around the Daniel Kearney Associates in Los Angeles. They center around a group of dudes whose main job it is to find people to get money out of them. Obviously there are complicating factors to make the stories more entertaining. A real focus on the drudgery of paperwork, ringing doorbells, and driving around neighborhoods looking for cars that need to be repossessed.

http://www.thrillingdetective.com/dka.html

The BBC show The Cops was great but it seems to have sunk without trace. No DVD box set which is a shame.

thanks for the rec ian

oop i was wrong, they're set in SF not LA. my bad. they're good. i'd lend you "Dead Skip" but I lent it out to someone else and it hasn't been returned. You can really read them in any order cuz they're all self-contained stories and the character development and relationships aren't extreme or particularly complicated.

i'm enjoying the fall but i'm really not looking fwd to the wife finding out :-/

i just started watching The Shield finally, and I'm really digging it

the naked city
once upon a time in anatolia
clockers

the only martin amis novel I've ever read was an attempt at this, can't remember what it was called. It was ok.

clockers is all-time

never seen the movie but the book, man. sometimes I think about poor strike.

crime fiction is a bit fucking grim, I read my 1st ellroy the other day (the big nowhere) because I was too distracted for tolstoy. The book practically read itself, I was impressed, but the fixation on only the meanest elements of humanity... it's wearing. And I'm a tireless gass booster, I dig celine, I <3 dostoevsky but idk, I find the hard genre stuff harder going for some reason

i highly recommend all of Richard Price's novels, even his not-great stuff is better than most

or ahem his POLICE PROCEDURAL

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1825122/

wow i did not know about that!

it was pretty fresh, well-observed, promising.

Barney Miller

retired-Newark-cop father of my friend swears by its veracity

Derek Raymond's "Factory" series abt an unnamed sergeant working in the Department of Unexplained Deaths is really good. There is not a lot of forensic stuff or working with other branches of the department, but they're gritty and wonderful for brushing up on your eighties londoner slang. very dark stuff.

crime fiction is a bit fucking grim, I read my 1st ellroy the other day (the big nowhere) because I was too distracted for tolstoy. The book practically read itself, I was impressed, but the fixation on only the meanest elements of humanity... it's wearing. And I'm a tireless gass booster, I dig celine, I <3 dostoevsky but idk, I find the hard genre stuff harder going for some reason

it's kind of like that taken to the point of a knife in the eye, but you really ought to experience the 'american tabloid' trilogy. there is probably a finnegans wake / beckett comparison around ilx somewhere. the prose is unreal.

i feel like i have watched all the procedurals : /

i need to make a break into the 80s/70s so i can mine them for what they're worth, but every time i try the shows are just so SLOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWW

this was a pretty good year for procedurals

well i watched all 20 seasons of l&o from start to finish this year so i need recalibrating

i am finally watching luther. it's pretty good.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/27/arts/television/times-critics-share-last-chance-tv-picks.html?_r=0

It’s not too late to try the antidote, a French crime series called “Spiral” (“Engrenages” in the original French), which is available on Netflix with subtitles.

This show offers a bracing Continental alternative to all the Scandinavian-ish existential gloom. “Spiral” is dark and brutal but fast paced. It’s a complex but exciting look at detectives chasing child molesters, drug traffickers and terrorists in a Parisian world of corrupt judges, political intrigue and government officials modeled on Dominique Strauss-Kahn. There are four seasons available now, and a fifth in the works, and each season revolves around one major crime that has unexpected ripple effects.

It’s not a show that breaks all traditions. Like so many crime dramas, including “The Killing,” this series is centered on a single, irascible and fiercely dedicated heroine, the homicide detective Laure Berthaud (Caroline Proust). But Laure is not an outcast or a loner. The male detectives who work for her like her and are deeply loyal, and she even wins over the handsome, slightly stuffy investigating magistrate, Pierre Clément (Grégory Fitoussi), who begins the series as a rising star with friends — and tennis partners — in high places. The one person Laure can’t get along with is a defense lawyer, Joséphine Karlsson (Audrey Fleurot), a sexy, covetous climber who is ruthless in the service of her clients and, most important, herself.

“Spiral” is less like “The Killing” than “Law & Order” — filtered with Parisian cynicism and sophistication. It’s one of the best crime dramas around at the moment, and it would be a shame not to give it a try.

Haven't finished series 4 yet but the other ones are very good.

ooooh thanks.

Way up top someone wrote Night and the City. I think they meant the Naked City. Same director but one is police procedural the other anti-hero film noir.

i like spiral a lot

french people tell me the acting in spiral is quite poor. i enjoyed it though. there is one scene per episode that seems designed to shock.

I watched a few eps of Spiral before we got sucked into Top of the Lake; gotta go back to Spiral.

Also started THE FALL the other day and it seems alright but I wish focused more on Scully and less on the killer.

i thought i posted abt it on this thread but this year I really enjoyed the novels of Gene Kerrigan. My favorite was probably "The Midnight Choir" about troubled policeman Harry Synott. All four of Kerrigan's novels give you the POV of both police and criminals, but I found Synott to be the most compelling. He has problems with the corruption he sees in the cops around him but he's also no angel himself. Lots of different plot strands that come together in unexpected and powerful ways. Kerrigan was/is a journalist as well and has written extensively abt crime and corruption in Ireland.

but I wish focused more on Scully and less on the killer.

It strikes a fine balance imo

i only watched 1.5 eps, so i will keep going.

the fall is good, kind of wish there was more ni politics stuff and less life-of-the-killer stuff but in the absence of prime suspect ill take it

Also belongs in the cartoon-movie-poster thread.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c3/Les_Ripoux.jpg

i am fully on board w the Fall now BTW.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/television/2014/01/true_detective_on_hbo_starring_matthew_mcconaughey_and_woody_harrelson_reviewed.html

http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/articles/arts/movies/2014/01/140108_MOV_TrueDetective.jpg.CROP.original-original.jpg

yesssss

I'm so down for this, it looks really good

I'm thinking about watching Prime Suspect, just 23 years after it came out...is it still considered good? I've caught a bit so far and it just seems so dated (not the styles though they do) but the attitudes...should I stick with it?

Thanks to being out of The Fall and Luther on Netflix

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