NYPD Too: Part Two — More of Our Favorite NYC Cop Shows
Part two of our look at New York City cop shows. See Part One.
There are eight million cop shows in the Naked City. Here are some more of our favorites.
87th Precinct (1961–1962)
Crime fiction fans revere the idiosyncratic 87th Precinct series of novels and short stories penned by Evan Hunter under the pseudonym Ed McBain. Protagonist Steve Carella was a dogged, decent, workaday detective in “Isola,” McBain’s thinly veiled stand-in for New York City, and the richly drawn characters and vexing cases he encountered ran the gamut from eccentrically amusing to despairingly horrific. Cop Hater, the first in the series, was released in 1956, and was greatly influenced by the television series Dragnet in its depiction of the procedural aspects of police work. McBain added an ensemble cast structure, morally complex characters on both sides of the law, and healthy dollops of sardonic humor and unusual character details (Carella’s partner, Meyer Meyer (Norman Fell), was named by a father with a cruel sense of humor), essentially setting the template for Hill Street Blues and most of the other programs on this list.
It’s fitting, then, that the series was adapted for television in 1961 for NBC, starring familiar small screen actor Robert Lansing as Carella and a pre-iconic Gena Rowlands as Teddy, Carella’s wife, a deaf woman. Deaf characters remain vanishingly rare on contemporary TV — in the early 60s, they were completely invisible, and Rowland’s nuanced performance drew critical appreciation. Critical reaction was in fact strongly positive across the board, singling out the show’s lively dialogue and depiction of authentic police techniques (though the consensus held that the show started rough but improved greatly over its run), but the series lasted only a single season before low ratings forced its cancellation.
Seen today, 87th Precinct rarely rises above the level of “serviceable” — it’s a little slow and clunky and irretrievably “of its time” — but its DNA (via McBain’s novels) can be found in every significant police procedural that followed, and the luminous Rowlands in this early role makes an indelible impression.
Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2001–2011)
Criminal Intent is the weird little brother of the dysfuntional Law & Order family: this offshoot of Dick Wolf’s unstoppable franchise purported to differ from its siblings in extending its focus to the motivations of the perpetrators as well as the familiar machinations of the NYPD and District Attorney. It was an intriguing premise almost immediately abandoned in favor of fore-fronting the character of Detective Robert Goren (Vincent D’Onofrio), a Sherlock Holmes–like oddball genius haunted by personal demons and preternaturally gifted at harnessing his vast, unruly intellect to understand his prey and connect the dots of a case with an intuitive flair that verged on mystical.
Rarely has an actor so dominated a project; the investigations existed only to give Goren opportunities to sniff corpses, display impossibly esoteric knowledge on any given subject, impose his looming physicality on suspects, and explode into startling rages. D’Onofrio’s twitchy, tic-ridden performance was mesmerizing, and deftly thrown into comic relief by the understated performance of Kathryn Erbe as Goren’s wry, practical partner Alexandra Eames. Goren progressed from a brash, impulsive, occasionally bullying livewire to a deeply depressed, seething basket case over the run of the character on the show, and as the series increasingly centered on his personal drama (a needy, mentally ill mother (Rita Moreno), a very weird relationship with serial killer/Moriarty stand-in Nicole Wallace (Olivia D’Abo)), Criminal Intent effectively ceased being a procedural and instead functioned as a wildly melodramatic acting exercise.
Which, for a certain breed of TV junkie, was wonderfully entertaining. The Law & Order mothership and its grim Special Victims Unit spinoff provided the reassuring structure and satisfying resolutions — Criminal Intent was free to follow its own bizarre, lurid path and give D’Onofrio a platform to indulge his wildest thespian impulses. It’s a hoot.
D’Onofrio exited Criminal Intent in its ninth season, citing exhaustion (no kidding). Chris Noth and Jeff Goldblum respectively tried to fill Goren’s size 14 oxfords, but the magic was gone. D’Onofrio returned for the show’s final season, in which Goren’s continued employment with the NYPD was contingent upon his attending therapy sessions. Sic gloria transit mundi.
Cagney and Lacey (1982–1988)
Cagney and Lacey shocked TV audiences in 1982 with its mind-bending premise: the show would follow the lives of two police officers, an effective team of investigators who happened to be . . . women!
(we’ll give you a second to replace your monocle)
For some reason blazingly controversial, C&L was twice cancelled early on by CBS (who feared the characters were perceived as lesbians — think of the children!) and brought back by savvy politicking and passionate fan response, orchestrated by explicitly feminist show creator Barney Rosenzweig.
Writers Barbara Corday and Barbara Avedon introduced the outgoing, married working mother Mary Beth Lacey (Tyne Daly) and tough-as-nails single gal Christine Cagney (Sharon Gless, after brief turns by Loretta Switt and Meg Foster in the role), detectives in Manhattan’s 14th Precinct struggling to do an impossible job while managing equally complicated personal lives. Daly and Gless quickly became feminist icons in the roles, winning six Emmy Awards between them over the show’s seven seasons (the show won for Best Drama Series twice).
Cagney and Lacey was revolutionary mostly for its novel assertion that two women could carry a primetime police drama — at heart the show is a well-made but formally pedestrian procedural/relationship drama, distinguished by the strong performances of its leads. Specific story points or memorable moments may be difficult to recall, but the mere fact of the show’s existence, and its profound resonance with its dedicated fanbase, place Cagney and Lacey in the pantheon of all-time great cop dramas.
Barney Miller (1975–1982)
A “hang-out” sitcom features an appealing ensemble that spends more time sitting around trading zingers than engaged in plot mechanics (think Friends or How I Met Your Mother). Barney Miller, which ran on ABC from 1975 to 1982, was an early exemplar of the form: Put-upon, even-keeled police captain Miller (Hal Linden) consumed oceans of terrible coffee alongside his subordinates in a drab squad room the cast rarely ventured beyond, performing the bureaucratic aspects of police work while herding suspects and ruefully shooting the breeze.
The squad included the ancient, exhausted Fish (Abe Vigoda), perennially on the verge of retirement; Dietrich (Steve Landesberg), a deadpan smarty-pants with an odd sense of humor; the gormless but earnest Wojo (Max Gail); the left-of-center philosopher Yemana (Jack Soo); and the ambitious, self-regarding, aspiring author Harris (Ron Glass). The alchemy of this odd stew was comedy magic, as these wildly diverse personalities, united in a common misery and frustration nearly existential in its profundity, bounced off of each other in endlessly rewarding combinations.
Barney Millers’ low-key realism made it a favorite with actual cops; as real-life New York police detective Lucas Miller told the New York Times:
“Real cops are not usually fans of cop shows. […] Many police officers maintain that the most realistic police show in the history of television was the sitcom Barney Miller, […] The action was mostly off screen, the squad room the only set, and the guys were a motley bunch of character actors who were in no danger of being picked for the N.Y.P.D. pin-up calendar. But they worked hard, made jokes, got hurt and answered to their straight-man commander. For real detectives, most of the action does happen off screen, and we spend a lot of time back in the squad room writing reports about it. Like Barney Miller’s squad, we crack jokes at one another, at the cases that come in, and at the crazy suspect locked in the holding cell six feet from the new guy’s desk. Life really is more like Barney Miller than NYPD Blue, but our jokes aren’t nearly as funny.”
Brooklyn Nine-Nine (2013–Present)
Saturday Night Live and Lonely Island vet Andy Samberg leads Fox’s crack ensemble workplace comedy, playing irreverent, childlike detective Jake Peralta, who butts heads with new captain Raymond Holt (Andre Braugher), an impossibly reserved and by-the-book cop who, in his psychotically intense devotion to rectitude, easily matches Peralta’s louder brand of mania.
It’s not the most original dynamic, but the characters are so well-drawn and acted (Braugher is magnificent here, as understatedly hilarious as Holt as he was flamboyantly brilliant as Frank Pembleton on Homicide) that their every exchange is an absurdist delight of irreconcilable sensibilities. The cast is filled out by comedy ringers Joe Lo Truglio and Chelsea Peretti, gentle giant Terry Crews, earnest Melissa Fumero, foreboding Stephanie Beatriz, and the goofball Greek chorus of Dirk Blocker and Joel McKinnon Miller, all perfectly calibrated to yield maximum comedy from their interactions.
Among this bumptious crew are two African Americans (one of whom is gay) and two Latinas — the diversity in the squad room is presented as a simple fact of life, unremarked upon, just the natural way of things. For all of Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s inspired set pieces and crack ensemble acting, this basic humanistic idea — that very different people can come together in pursuit of a noble common cause — is the show’s secret weapon. Credit executive producer Michael Schur, who worked similar magic in the similarly warm, silly, ultimately optimistic Parks and Recreation.
Paley Matters is a publication of The Paley Center for Media.
Arthur Smith is an assistant curator at the Paley Center. He is the coauthor of Twin Peaks FAQ: All That’s Left to Know About a Place Both Wonderful and Strange (2016) and Buffy the Vampire Slayer FAQ: All That’s Left to Know About Sunnydale’s Slayer of Vampires, Demons, and Other Forces of Darkness (2017).
