Bruce K. Riordon at CrimeReads.com looks back at how police procedurals have evolved and he highlights 12 movies and TV series.
All such lists are subjective, and I concur
with Mr. Riordon’s pick of The French Connection, Bullitt, Serpico, The Wire and others. But I would knocked off a couple and added The Prince of the City, a truly great film that was based
on a true story. I would have also added Fuzz, which was perhaps the best film
adaptation of Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct police procedural series.
Once cannot talk about police
procedurals, it seems to me, without mentioning the late, great crime writer Ed
McBain. (And Fuzz started Burt Reynolds, who recently passed).
Since 1968, when Bullitt first shot into theaters turning Steve McQueen
and his Ford Mustang Fastback into global icons, the “police procedural” has
been a staple of crime stories on screens big and small. Bullitt’s smashing
success, both commercially and artistically, ushered in the first “Golden Age”
of the police procedural. The genre’s mainstream popularity has ebbed and
flowed since those heady days, but for crime aficionados, it has never faded.
Towards the end of the ‘Aughts, the procedural was disappearing from the big
screen, as Hollywood became increasingly preoccupied with cartoon super-heroes.
Movie studios had little interest in the gritty social realism and visceral
excitement that a great cop story provides.
HBO
resurrected the genre. When the first season of The Wire debuted on HBO in 2002, the minds of police
procedural fans everywhere were blown. The Wire was every bit as compelling, and every bit as
badass, as Bullitt. But it
felt completely new. Thanks to the long-form television series, the police
procedural is experiencing a second “Golden Age.”
Over the past five decades, the genre
has evolved with the times. But certain core elements have remained constant.
We watch police procedurals to get up close and personal with detectives at
work. What we see is not always—not even often—pretty. But we can’t stop
watching. The detectives at the heart of the best procedurals believe
that the they are the last best hope for justice in a compromised world and
they won’t stop until they take its full measure. No matter what the cost.
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