"The police should be treated as persons who, having been adjudged guilty of treason to their country, are regarded as unworthy to enjoy any of the privileges or comforts which arise from cordial relations with the public.”
Np station for you louts, you’ll have to make do with a barracks.
Law and Order as a franchise offers kind of a microcosm of the shift here as well. The earliest shows only rarely had running and gunning, the bulk of the episodes were often made up of one step at a time investigation stuff. Canvasing witnesses and neighbor hoods. The climax of the investigation half was a detective story grade reveal of just the right information. The trial/court room end followed the same path, with the courtroom scene standing in for the parlor scene that wraps it all up with a last twist.
My folks have been watching a lot of SVU lately. The late seasons are a really stark contrast with the show’s origins. Nearly every episode involves guns some where, many of them have the cops put upon by questionable accusations of brutality or yet another justified shooting where red tape unfairly hampers them. Every case is a boomer wet dream about immoral teens and shifty minorities.
Yeah that is rediculously high, and I’m pretty sure I remember it being much, much lower even just a few years back.
Columbo was a cop???
I thought he was a crime-solving-hobo or something.
/s
Hollywood also has quite a few actors from Great Britain (as well as many other places). Many actors migrate from their original home countries to the US during the process of “making it”, so that makes the weeding out of the not-as-glamorous even more exaggerated. Mostly only people who look like models get their chance there.
and Bob Hoskins…
The thing is that cop shows in the United States are basically westerns but set in modern times with big cities instead of the rugged landscape of 19th century Southwest America. It’s more about the romanticism of supposedly fighting bad guys than it is about showing the complexities and ambiguities the justice system can have at its most personal level.
Ok, only people who look like models or really really really really exceptionally good actors. Or relatives of the producers/directors, and the children of other famous actors who were born with the “name recognition” despite being unable to act, and the occasional famous person from another field (sports, music) who also have built-in name recognition.
Cheers, immaculate caveat. 
See also superhero movies. Every real-life cop thinks he’s a superhero who shouldn’t need to follow procedures and regulations that are supposed to protect the public.
A more recent example of that kind of show was Monk. Basically, an OCD Columbo.
Good ol’ Monk. Love a cop who’s not afraid to get his hands dirty.
Both those shows are more traditional detective fiction rather than Cop shows. In that they’re not about Police, and Police Departments or the subject of policing. But cases and twists and a single brilliant investigator.
And critically Monk wasn’t a cop (though IIRC the back story was that he used to be). Together with Psych USA Network had a little thing going for quirky spins on old school “consulting detective” shows.
Psych was so fun.
Did Monk have the same premise where the viewer sees the crime and then the detective has to figure out what happened?
They should bring back Quincy.
Yeah. I’m still disappointed that whole trend disappeared and left us with the highly criticisable on this front yay cops procedurals as the only option.
I don’t recall specifically. But pretty sure Psych did, though it often left bits out. So you were simultaneously trying to figuring it out but lording a bit of info you had over characters who didn’t.
And they were basically the same show with different characters slotted in. Really clever take on the formula they had running there.
That 27% of cops ever USE their guns doesn’t mean that use is justified. When all you have is hammer, etc etc. I wouldn’t be surprised if that number has been ticking upwards as more idiot wannabe cowboys get slapped with a badge.
IIRC, sometimes. I don’t think it was every episode, though.
Well, from personal contact with armed police officers here in the U.K., they used to carry a semi-automatic carbine, I believe a Heckler & Koch, along with a semi-auto pistol, but I’m not absolutely certain what type.
My interaction was as a result of the pub I regularly drank at being about 200 metres from the home of Tom King, Minister for Northern Ireland during Maggie Thatcher’s time in office, when the IRA were a real and present danger, and senior Ministers had an armed Police guard. It wasn’t unusual to be sat outside the pub in the evening and have a shadowy figure walk down the steps from the top car park to the riverside patio, resolving into a police officer with flack vest, semi-auto carbine over his shoulder, and holstered pistol, nod, and get a nod and a ‘good evening’, and see other drinkers sat, open-mouthed in astonishment!
There was never any issues with the pub still being open well after midnight, despite closing time being 11pm, either; that meant eyes and people being around a lot more, which did lead to two people being arrested after scoping out the area, and charged under terrorist offences.
I have seen armed police in London, and at Heathrow Airport, but nowadays it’s very, very rare to see any armed officers anywhere in the U.K.
Going back to British police TV shows, my all-time favourite was ‘Morse’, followed by ‘Lewis’, and now ‘Endeavour’, all set in the city of Oxford, each episode a two-hour cinematic masterpiece where not much happened, apart from a few interesting murders, and the intricate detective work and personal crises of those involved, along with beautiful classical musical soundtracks, with Morse code clues woven in.
