police
Veronica Lee
The basic set-up for The Heat is familiar – two mismatched cops are thrown together on a case and have to find a way of working together despite their differences in social background and methods – only in this case the officers are female. Add to the mix that the two actresses playing the roles are playing to type - loudmouth Boston street cop Shannon Mullins (Melissa McCarthy, almost reprising her Bridesmaids role) and prissy, super-bright but socially inept FBI agent Sarah Ashburn, as essayed by Sandra Bullock in any number of her films.The Heat, written by Katie Dippold (who writes on Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The ancients teach us that after hubris comes nemesis, and Luther's writer/creator Neil Cross has taken the lesson to heart. The big question hanging over this third series is, can the bullish DCI John Luther continue to hunt villains in his own headstrong, politically-incorrect fashion, or will he be brought down by snarling Detective Super George Stark, a bitter and vengeful man hauled out of retirement to bring Luther his come-uppance? He's played with spittle-flecked animosity by David O'Hara, and you can't help hoping that at some point Luther will drop him off the top of a tall building Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
After a two-year gap, Luther returns to BBC One for a third series at the beginning of July. Devotees of Idris Elba's broody, enigmatic, rule-trampling 'tec may feel disgruntled that they're only going to get four episodes, but at least the great man is on stonking form.Naturally your spoiler-free artsdesk can't give much of the game away, but this time the sometimes erratic Luther appears to have found its own natural tone, in which heightened realism and jump-out-of-your-seat grand guignol shocks sit comfortably with grimy east London locations. You get not one but a generous two killers to Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
You have to wonder if there any alternative themes permitted in TV drama apart from murder (preferably multiple, committed by a serial killer) or paedophilia. New five-parter The Fall plonks itself down squarely in category A, with its story of DS Stella Gibson (Gillian Anderson) from the Metropolitan Police arriving in Belfast to shake up a stalled murder inquiry.This one won't be a whodunnit but rather a howtheycatchim, since we were introduced to the perp only moments after we'd caught our first glimpse of Anderson, who was cleaning a murky-looking skin care product off her face in the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
I don't know how accurate Scott & Bailey is as a portrayal of the daily experiences of policewomen, but screenwriter Sally Wainwright is enjoying herself hugely with the chaotic private lives of her protagonists. Quite a bit of this echoes back to the death of barrister Nick Savage (the ineffably sleazy Rupert Graves) in series two. He was DC Rachel Bailey's lover, though he'd failed to mention that he was already married with two children. To heap insult on injury, she then discovered he'd had an affair with a juror during a court case.Anyhow, in this mostly-retrospective episode, we saw Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It looks as if Broadchurch will reveal itself as a "town-with-murky-secrets" story, but on the evidence of this first episode we can expect it to be done with a skilful touch and a fine eye for detail. The trigger for the action is the death of 11-year-old Danny Latimer, but writer Chris Chibnall is focusing on the effect this has on family and friends as much as on the grim event itself.Broadchurch is a small seaside town in Dorset where violent crime is largely unheard of. When Danny's body is first discovered on the beach, suicide or an accident are canvassed as possible causes. Then Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
I wonder if ITV ever imagined this Inspector Morse spin-off would last seven series? The opening pair of episodes in this valedictory season of Lewis still clocked over eight million viewers, though the numbers have subsided a bit since. Future one-off specials have not been ruled out.The final story, "Intelligent Design" (its traditional two-hour format split into two single hours) sustained a reliably Lewisian tenor, with its tale of a murdered academic, Professor Seager, who'd just been released from prison, where he'd been dispatched following a drunk-driving incident in which a young Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
A lot has happened since uncompromising French cop drama Spiral was last on our TV screens in May 2011. More of continental Europe has arrived. Attention has shifted northwards to Denmark for The Killing and Borgen. Sweden’s Wallander and Sebastian Bergman were never far. The Bridge closed the gap between both countries. French contender Braquo threw down the gauntlet too, but it was never going to steal Spiral’s thunder as it was just too cartoony, too brutal to clench to your bosom. Can the return of Spiral, its flawed heroine Captain Laure Berthaud and her scruffbag chic raise the flag Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
How could we have expected the London 2011 riots to be brought back for the big screen? The least likely answer must be as a black comedy about a bicycle cop who after a bad concussion has woken up as a one-man vigilante who’s taking out the villains on his beat, but asking their permission first. That last detail explains the title of Stuart Urban’s May I Kill U?, which brings this particular wayward member of her majesty’s constabulary rather into Carry On territory, with a twist of Ealing comedy on the side.The odds are already stacked towards absurdity when your hero’s called Baz Vartis, Read more ...
emma.simmonds
“It’s always the quiet places where the mad shit happens,” observes Garda Lisa Nolan (Ruth Bradley) in Northern Irish director Jon Wright’s creature feature. And, credit where it’s due, the mirthfully monikered Grabbers presents us with some classically mad shit. Set on the fictional Erin Island - a fishing village off the coast of Ireland - Grabbers is Wright’s second feature after 2009’s Tormented.After a prologue involving the fatal molestation of fisherman by an unseen sea monster, we’re introduced to Garda Ciarán O’Shea (Richard Coyle). He’s rebounding off rock bottom, drunk and Read more ...
Mark Sanderson
Each episode of Southland – the best American cop show since The Shield – begins frenetically and never lets up – except for a freeze-frame in the first minute which the rest of the show spools back to explain. In this first part of the fourth season, one of LA’s finest is out of his black-and-white and chasing a suspect within seconds as his partner careers down the back alleys of South Los Angeles.These signature car chases are one of the reasons that adrenalin junkies love it so. The suspect leaps a chain-link fence: the officer known as Hollywood (a rich kid with a pretty face and a big Read more ...
emma.simmonds
Often portrayed as corrupt or, at best, on the front line of a war zone, the officers of the LAPD are regulars on the big and small screen. On TV, Southland and The Shield have examined the LAPD in microscopic detail and earlier this year Rampart intermittently impressed with its focus on one cop in freefall. With police procedural End of Watch writer-director David Ayer is on home turf: he’s the man behind several LA-set police thrillers, including Training Day (for which he penned the screenplay).Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña play patrol officers Brian Taylor and Mike Zavala. Despite Read more ...