Greatest cop shows

I find it completely and utterly baffling that Castle has been on the air since 2009 and I've never once heard anyone anywhere say a word about it. I always assumed it was on a year or two and everything on TNT (or wherever) was reruns.

And I'm delighted Sledge Hammer! made the list. It was wonderfully awful, at least my 14-year-old brain thought so when it was on.

 

When I first watched it back in the 80s as an 11-year-old, I always wondered why the hell they never resolved the Season 1 cliffhanger.

And speaking of baffling shows, I was floored when that article mentioned "Law & Order: SVU" has been on for 17 years. It's like Voyager 2 being far more accomplished than Voyager 1.
If SVU makes it to a 21st season and surpasses the original in longevity, America should riot.

 

Very true, and it's usually about Seasons 3-6. It takes a couple of years for everyone to figure stuff out -- actors and writers find their groove with the characters, production values improve, the network throws some more money into everything once it's obvious the show can last -- and then by about Season 7 everyone starts to run out of steam and ideas. Actors leave and budgets get cut as ratings decline. There's still the occasional home run episode, but they get rarer.
That's the most astonishing thing, to me, about shows like "The Simpsons" and "Law & Order" is that they were largely been able to maintain continuity in the cast and still pump out watchable shows for two or three decades. Even if the episodes aren't as good as they were at their peak, they're still entertaining.

 

I'm with Batman - The Simpsons is still a perfectly watchable show. Perfectly cromulent, some might say. Then again, I like that they're getting weird in their senior citizen years, like having a side plot where Maggie goes on a solo adventure, and cross-overs with Futurama and Family Guy.

 

Also, to actually be on-topic - As others have said, Police Squad was awesome, but only a couple episodes. Thank goodness there are the three movies. The commentary tracks for all three are also worth checking out. They bust on OJ Simpson ("Now is this footage from OJ's house or the movie?" as he's sneaking around the boat in the first movie) and talk about how the TV show essentially got cancelled after one episode. The famous line from the executive was roughly, "Police Squad doesn't work as a show because you have to watch it."

When it comes to the more traditional cop shows, The Wire is probably my top pick when it comes to season-long narratives. Plenty of interesting conventional and non-conventional things on that show, especially in the first three seasons. Episodic shows, Columbo would be my pick for the detective show, with Law and Order taking the procedural category. Both shows got weird toward the end, especially the Columbo TV movies. The last couple episodes have him trying to use a computer, and investigating eurotrash at an LA rave.

 

I think the first four seasons are the best, before Kono was written out of the show.

As someone else mentioned, those early H-5-O seasons had quite a few interesting/dark topics that were groundbreaking at the time. Stuff like post-traumatic stress disorder affecting Vietnam vets, for example.

 

NYPD Blue is woefully low on that list.

And how do 24 and The Andy Griffith Show qualify as "cop" shows?

And as long as a couple short-lived shows made the list, I'd like to offer up Hooperman, starring John Ritter.

 

There's a reason why the H-5-O syndication package is only the first six seasons or so. When I saw they had the full series run on Netflix, I started watching it, remembering a ton of episodes from the early years. Then I started seeing episodes, I didn't remember.By the time I got to the last two or three seasons, it was godawful. But I figured I might as well press on and finish the series.

I wish I hadn't. It killed what I remember being a pretty good show.

 

Yeah, the last 2-3 seasons of H5O were pretty bad, although the series finale, in which McGarrett took down Wo Fat in a hand-to-hand fight (I believe the only time the arch-enemies actually faced off one on one) was actually good.

 

And after Conrad died, the next guy said, "Let's do it to them before they do it to us."