Posted on 06/18/2020 2:30:46 PM PDT by Ennis85
Do the final credits beckon for TV cop shows? With police violence in America on the front pages following the death of George Floyd, the gloss has clearly gone off that prime time favourite, the crime procedural. As protests sweep America, there have been calls to put the long-running Law and Order: SVU in cold storage.
The criticism is that it presents an unrealistically rosy portrait of the police and their handling of sex offences. Law and Order depicts an “alternative version of reality where the justice system works the way it’s supposed to,” said Rolling Stone writer EJ Dickson in a piece demanding SVU to be placed in the clinker.
A Washington Post writer has gone further in urging American networks to call a halt to all shows that cast police forces in a heroic light. The implication is that Hollywood, in creating these easily-digestible potboilers, is serving as a propaganda arm for police across the United States.
“For a century, Hollywood has been collaborating with police departments, telling stories that whitewash police shootings and valorising an action-hero style of policing over the harder, less dramatic work of building relationships with the communities cops are meant to serve and protect,” wrote Alyssa
Rosenberg. “Watching cop shows always requires a certain suspension of disbelief,” agreed The New Republic, “the detective who, armed with a few vague details, sifts through tens of thousands of records in a matter of seconds to pinpoint a single car to her team. The bartender who remembers every person she’s ever served a drink. The fact that virtually every case is even solved in the first place.
“Television didn’t start the trend of white Americans’ obsession with the supposed valour of the police, but it is one of the more powerful means of transmitting and reinscribing it to the nation,” continued the piece. Such objections clearly do not apply
— or at least not in the same way — in Ireland. For one thing, decent police procedurals here are rarer than a face-mask on public transport. In recent years, there has been Red Rock on Virgin Media One and the RTE/BBC co-production Dublin Murders (filmed largely in Belfast, scripted by a British TV writer and not especially “Dublin” in its ambience). And that is just about it.
Neither Red Rock or Dublin Murders could be mistaken for the slick propaganda of which
Law and Order is accused. In each series, the focus was as much on the murky personal lives of the gardaí as on their crime-fighting heroics. If the goal was putting our own police on a pedestal, then these dramas failed horribly. But then, was that their intention in the first place?
On the other hand, America’s cultural influence has never been stronger in Ireland. So it is inevitable that a backlash against a positive depiction of police in the US will resonate this side of the Atlantic. We in Ireland, after all, lap up American shows with gusto — which may explain why Sky Atlantic feels obliged to devote so much of its broadcast time to Tom Selleck’s NYPD drama
Blue Bloods (about an “Irish” police family in Brooklyn).
“This is a big issue, extending beyond the police in the United States to how Hollywood and the TV networks depict various parts of the armed forces,” says Irish crime writer Laurence O’Bryan, whose novels include The Istanbul Puzzle and The Sign Of The Blood.
“It is widely accepted that close cooperation exists between these companies and the FBI, local law enforcement and other agencies. These relationships provide the story makers with authenticity and cooperation, but carry a weight of acceptable practices in the stories, which can be the result of group think and clear direction as to how to do things.”
Of course, too perfect a portrait of policing would ring hollow. The way shows get around this, suggests O’Bryan, is by acknowledging crooked coppers, but implying they are very much the exception. “The bad apple trope is the usual way TV stories deal with poor practices in law enforcement agencies,” he says.
“As a reader and a writer, I’m more interested in police protagonists who straddle the margins and struggle with conscience,” says writer Caroline Farrell, author of the 2017 crime novel Lady Beth. “I would not be drawn to tough cop tropes in fiction, whatever their gender. Same goes for TV and film.
“I made a conscious decision not to write my novel, Lady Beth, as a police procedural. The detective in the book makes decisions that go against the remit of his job. Decisions that are purely influenced by his social vision. That’s interesting to me as it places his humanity to the fore and not the rules of his job or how tough he might get to keep control or to get what he needs.”
Change may already be afoot suggests Andrea Mara, a crime novelist from Dublin whose books include The Other Side Of The
Wall and recently published The Sleeper Lies. Increasingly police are depicted not as gruff rule-breakers, but as flawed individuals, doing their best and occasionally falling short.
“What I have noticed, however, if I consider some of the books and TV series I’ve recently read or watched, is that they feature kinder, more human detectives.
“For example, on TV right now, I’m watching a UK police series called Unforgotten .It features a detective called Cassie Stuart, who is noticeably calm, polite and kind, but still gets the job done. There’s no shouting at the underlings and no yelling during interrogations, and much as I enjoy tough-cop type interrogations like the ones featured in
Line Of Duty, it’s very interesting to see how well this different type of ‘softer’ detective works.”
It’s important to recognise that, even in America, not all procedurals genuflect before the police. The great early prestige drama
The Shield was a warts-and-all chronicling of police corruption, whilst HBO’s The Wire showed how sclerosis in public institutions — the police included — shortchanges citizens and corrodes society.
“As reality diverges from the stories we see on TV of glorified detectives of one stripe or another, it is highly likely that they will become less popular,” adds O’Bryan.
“This may change as the production companies adapt, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for BLM-friendly police shows. We have an election coming in the US and the arms of the state are still mostly resolute.
“A democratic victory in November may herald change, but both book publishing and much mass media production are slow to adapt, as executives are often afraid for their positions and want only to do what is safe.”
‘The bad apple trope is the usual way TV stories deal with poor practices in law enforcement agencies’
And this would be because - racism.
I’m watching the greatest cop show ever...Miami Vice.
Bye bye Law and Order SVU.
Most civilizations rot and self-destruct from within over time .. a few have just vanished.. so either way, the Left has our fate covered.
Yup. NCIS—gone. Reruns of Miami Vice-—gone. Mayberry RFD-—gone. Reruns of Dragnet-—gone. Magnum PI-—gone. Gagme and lacey-—gone. NYPD Blue-—gone. Your reason.
Law and Order was a left leaning fluff from the very start.
Now it isn’t left wing enough?
“...From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.””
I’m watching Miami Vice on Starz via Amazon Prime.
Next up is Magnum P.I.
“Bye bye Law and Order SVU.”
That’s a positive as that show and Hargitay are so ridiculously far left it’s beyond laughable.
We did the entire NYPD blue series on Prime before the scamDEMic hit. Oh yeah, there are for sure some racial components in that. So, amazon may have pulled it.
To an extent all TV shows involve some suspension of reality. Of course in real life, the police don’t regularly solve murders in just a few hours like that.
Most murders in murder capital Chicago for example, are not even solved.
But these are TV shows. People watch them for entertainment.
BLM spells the end of free speech and thought.
Just like everything can be Hitler - everything can be racist and you will be fired or destroyed if you say something against BLM.
Ladies and Gentleman this is the very definition of tyranny. This is not a drill.
NOOOOOOOOOOO!
Ha!
Enjoying one of my favorite movies.
Dirty Harry
Ah gots to know!
Also Car 54, Dragnet, Hill St. Blues, Rescue 911, The cartoon called C.O.P.S., and even Cop Rock!
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