Cop Shows

<p> From cops who are paragons of virtue to cops who are as bad as the bad guys...from surly loners to upbeat partners...from detectives who pursue painstaking investigation to loose cannons who just want to kick down the door the heroes and anti-heroes of TV police dramas are part of who we are. They enter our living rooms and tell us tall tales about the social contract that exists between the citizen and the police. Love them or loathe them--according to the ratings we love them--they serve a function. They've entertained informed and sometimes infuriated audiences for more than 60 years.</p><p> This book examines <I>Dragnet Highway Patrol Naked City The Untouchables The F.B.I. Columbo Hawaii Five-O Kojak Starsky & Hutch Hill Street Blues Cagney & Lacey Miami Vice Law & Order Homicide: Life on the Street NYPD Blue CSI The Shield The Wire</I> and <I>Justified</I>.</p><p> It's time to take another look at the perps the vics and the boys and girls in blue and ask how their representation intersects with questions of class gender sexuality and race. What is their socio-cultural agenda? What is their relation to genre and televisuality? And why is it that when a TV cop gives a witness his card and says call me that witness always ends up on a slab?</p>