Police procedurals have been one of the most consistently popular genres since the early days of TV, with shows like “Dragnet” and “The Plainclothesman” thrilling audiences during the dawn of television. Starting in the early 1980s, TV showrunners began adding nuance and social criticism to their stories of police officers fighting crime — sometimes even turning a critical eye on the institution of policing itself. That created not just great police stories but some of the best series ever aired.
‘Hill Street Blues’ (1981-1987)
NBC’s “Hill Street Blues” invented the gritty police drama in an era when squeaky clean cops and black-and-white narratives were the norm. Set in a deliberately unnamed large American city, the show features an ensemble cast of police officers, including a woman, Officer Lucy Bates (Betty Thomas) and fully realized Black characters like Officer Bobby Hill (Michael Warren) and Detective Neal Washington (Taurean Blacque) — another pioneering element of the show.
But the way the series changed TV history was to foreground the characters’ personal lives and struggles, including alcoholism, divorce and depression, and make them an integral part of the narrative. The show “ushered in a new golden age of television, and its ripples are still felt now,” said Lorne Manly at The New York Times. (Prime)
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Latest Videos From
‘NYPD Blue’ (1993-2005)
One of the first police procedurals to take police misconduct and racism seriously, ABC’s “NYPD Blue” is cocreated by “Hill Street Blues” showrunner Steven Bochco, and its style was designed to compete with cable TV that would “push up against the limits of what ABC’s censors would allow, and perhaps a little beyond that,” said Rolling Stone.
It’s willingness to show its main cast, including troubled Detective Andy Sipowicz (Dennis Franz), Detective Bobby Simone (Jimmy Smits) and Detective Greg Medavoy (Gordon Clapp), engaging in extra-legal behavior to solve crimes made it “one of the most influential TV dramas ever made,” Rolling Stone added, even if by its later seasons the show seemed to sometimes be endorsing the bad behavior it once criticized. (Hulu)
‘Homicide: Life on the Street’ (1993-1999)
Series creator Paul Attanasio adapted a book by journalist David Simon (who would go on to create “The Wire”) into a story about a Baltimore homicide unit that, like “Hill Street Blues,” gave viewers an intimate look at emotionally tortured police officers and the way their jobs often destroyed their personal lives. The unit is led by Lieutenant Al Giardello (Yaphet Kotto), with renowned performances from Andre Braugher as Detective Frank Pembleton, Melissa Leo as Detective Kay Howard and Richard Belzer as Detective John Munch, among others. “There is television before ‘Homicide: Life on the Street,’ and there is television after ‘Homicide: Life on the Street,’” said The Guardian. “Uber-cynical, darkly funny, highly literate,” NBC’s show is never better than “when staring straight into the tragic heart of its premise.” (Peacock)
‘The Wire’ (2002-2008)
HBO’s “The Wire” is a persuasive contender as the best TV show ever made. A sweeping look at the intersection of the drug trade, urban poverty, racism and policing, the show is set in a complicated, unvarnished Baltimore. Detectives Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West), “Bunk” Moreland (Wendell Pierce), Lester Freamon (Clarke Peters) and Kima Greggs (Sonja Sohn) are part of a unit tasked with using surveillance to take down a notorious Baltimore drug ring. But the show also tackles themes like addiction, the drug war, the plight of urban public schools and political corruption in its five seasons. Through its “unflinching depiction of power, race, class and American life,” the show stands as “the greatest show of the 21st century,” said the BBC. (HBO Max)
‘The Killing’ (2011-2014)
The series that launched a thousand streaming imitators, AMC’s “The Killing” (adapted from a Danish series) is both police procedural and bleak noir rolled into one highly addicting package. Joel Kinnaman is Detective Stephen Holder, who partners up with the self-destructive workaholic Sarah Linden (Mireille Enos) to solve the murder of a teenage girl. The rainy, Pacific Northwest setting is almost its own character, as the detectives zero in on a conspiracy that collides with the Seattle mayoral campaign of Darren Richmond (Billy Campbell). The show’s red-herring-per-week structure kept audiences guessing, but it works because a “large part of its suspense is generated through the careful management of expectation,” said Phillip Maciak at Slant Magazine. (AMC+)
‘True Detective’ (2014-)
The first season of HBO’s anthology series “True Detective” is a narrative, cinematic marvel. Set in two timelines, it is one of the first streaming shows to poach A-list Hollywood movie talent for the small screen rather than creating its own stars. The series follows two detectives, Rust Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) and Marty Hart (Woody Harrelson), as they solve a grisly murder in 1995, and then again in 2012, when they are being interviewed as part of a murder investigation that could be tied to the one they thought they solved. The show combines hints of the supernatural with quotable philosophical ruminations, like Cohle’s observation that “Time is a flat circle.” The “artfully written, remarkably acted, stunningly visualized” series is also a “recruitment video for nihilistic pessimism,” as well as an “express elevator to the sub-sub-subbasement of human degradation,” said James Poniewozik at Time. (HBO Max)
‘Happy Valley’ (2014-2023)
Sarah Lancashire turns in a career-defining performance as Sergeant Catherine Cawood, a Halifax police officer with an almost unimaginably bleak backstory. Her daughter committed suicide after being raped by Tommy Lee Royce (James Norton) and delivering his child, and Catherine is raising their young son, Ryan (Rhys Connah)—a sequence of events that destroyed her own marriage and life. When Tommy is released from prison, Catherine must both protect herself and Ryan and unravel a gruesome kidnapping plot that involves Tommy. The show’s “psychological grip lingers longer than expected” because it “treats violence not as power but as chaos, an inevitable psychological decay,” said Emily Nussbaum at The New Yorker. (BritBox)
‘The Break ‘(2016-2018)
RTBF’s crime show combines elements of playful humor with a menacing rural setting to create a unique French-language police drama. Detective Yoann Peeters (Yoann Blanc) and his teenage daughter, Camille (Sophie Breyer), move to an isolated village in the Belgian Ardennes after the tragic death of his wife. Almost immediately, he is plunged into a murder investigation when a young football player, Driss Assani (Jérémy Zagba), is found dead in the river.
Peters enlists inexperienced officers Marjorie (Lara Hubinont) and René (Tom Audenaert) in an investigation that, like most rural noir stories, involves uncovering locals’ long-held secrets and greed. Challenging stereotypes of a tidy, prosperous Europe, viewers are treated to “corrugated iron estates, decaying stadiums and people living in trailers,” said Karolina Nos-Cybelius at Film Folly. (MHz Choice)
