Lemme get it out of the way immediately: Best cop show of all-time. There, I said it. Yeah, better than Hill Street Blues. This is the show The Shield wishes it had been. Gritty, realistic, flawed people. The story focuses on a core group of patrol officers and detectives with Regina King (as Lydia Adams) being the star detective and the always-awesome Michael Cudlitz (as John Cooper) the veteran training officer and Ben Mackenzie (as Ben Sherman) his hotshot protege. We see the growth in Sherman from a rookie going through a ridiculously difficult early career to a comfortable (but not perfect) veteran spreading his wings and challenging his superiors. We see Cooper as he struggles with pain and addiction. And all of it comes off as realistic. There's nothing cartoonish or exaggerated here. If there's a flaw, it's that there's a bit too much gunplay and death. What's here is realistic, it's just a bit too frequent.
Unfortunately, Southland struggled to find an audience during its original run. NBC moved it around, stuck it in terrible timeslots and generally tried to bury it during its 7-episode first season. They ordered a second season, then canceled the show after 6 episodes had been filmed. TNT picked it up, aired the second season, then ordered three more seasons of 10 episodes each before canceling the show after season 5. THAT cancellation resulted in one of the all-time most frustrating cliffhangers ever. The net result of the cancellations and bouncing around in the early seasons is that there's one or two storylines that get dropped without explanation. That's unfortunate.
Bottom line: This is a really, really great show that deserves a much-larger audience than it ever got. 10/10.
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