wherein John grumbles about cop shows
USA managed to persuade Vincent D’Onofrio and Karthryn Erbe to do a tenth Law & Order: Criminal Intent season after Jeff Goldblum quit the show last year. I suspect it was because of the horrible scripts. I don’t know what happened to that show after the fifth or sixth season, but they can’t seem to find a good writer anywhere. With so much crossover that the L&O franchise has had with the actors and crew in Homicide and The Wire, you would think they could rustle up a few former Wire writers to crank out some good scripts. No such luck. The first episode of the season was horrible. Episodes two and three were tolerable. The last really good episode I remember was two or three years ago. I never minded the alternate casts-Chris Noth, Julianne Nicholson, even Jeff Goldblum-but the writing has just been so bad for so long. What they did with the Nichole Wallace character in particular was asinine.
I found another cop show on Netflix, a British one absurdly entitled Wire In The Blood-WTF does that even mean-which is a tediously overdone criminal-profiler formula set in the dismal north of England, utterly unsatisfying but for the presence of Hermione Norris, whom I love to watch. I do prefer watching her in this to watching her in MI5, which combines the worst qualities of The X-Files and the worst qualities of 24. Another bad UK cop show is Law & Order: UK. Surprisingly, the current season of Law & Order: LA is better. Better than I expected, at least, and better than its first season. The only British cop show I like at the moment is reruns of Inspector Lewis on Netflix.
I did rent the Homicide season 6 episode “Subway” which is the script that in 1999 changed Vincent D’Onofrio’s erstwhile mind about not doing television and ultimately enabled him to be cast as Goren in Law & Order: CI three years later. Watching the episode, you’re literally watching his TV career begin. I miss a lot of those actors, particularly Andre Braugher and Michelle Forbes. It only hit me last night that the guy who played Colonel Barnfather on Homicide also played Pimpin’ Ass Orlando on The Wire.
Still, the only really good cop show I’ve seen since The Wire finished is the Canadian show Intelligence. In the meantime, as I wait for season five of Doc Martin to air, I am enjoying A Bit of Fry and Laurie.
Michael Mann is currently filming a new series for HBO. Now that I will pay $15 a month to watch.
I found another cop show on Netflix, a British one absurdly entitled Wire In The Blood-WTF does that even mean-which is a tediously overdone criminal-profiler formula set in the dismal north of England, utterly unsatisfying but for the presence of Hermione Norris, whom I love to watch. I do prefer watching her in this to watching her in MI5, which combines the worst qualities of The X-Files and the worst qualities of 24. Another bad UK cop show is Law & Order: UK. Surprisingly, the current season of Law & Order: LA is better. Better than I expected, at least, and better than its first season. The only British cop show I like at the moment is reruns of Inspector Lewis on Netflix.
I did rent the Homicide season 6 episode “Subway” which is the script that in 1999 changed Vincent D’Onofrio’s erstwhile mind about not doing television and ultimately enabled him to be cast as Goren in Law & Order: CI three years later. Watching the episode, you’re literally watching his TV career begin. I miss a lot of those actors, particularly Andre Braugher and Michelle Forbes. It only hit me last night that the guy who played Colonel Barnfather on Homicide also played Pimpin’ Ass Orlando on The Wire.
Still, the only really good cop show I’ve seen since The Wire finished is the Canadian show Intelligence. In the meantime, as I wait for season five of Doc Martin to air, I am enjoying A Bit of Fry and Laurie.
Michael Mann is currently filming a new series for HBO. Now that I will pay $15 a month to watch.