The Shield, The Wire, Boomtown

One side-effect of all of the war coverage, in addition to post February sweeps hiatus, is that it’s given me a chance to finish going through The Shield’s season one DVD set. 

For those who haven’t seen it, The Shield is a seriously gritty cop show set in Los Angeles.  The show, and it’s anti-hero star, Michael Chiklis have gotten a substantial amount of critical acclaim, and is one of the few cop shows that gives a portrayal of the streets of LA that actually seems realistic to anyone who has been there. 

I’m particularly fond of the complex morality tales and take-no-prisoners dialog that creator Shawn Ryan brings to the show.  No surprise, he’s yet another alumni of the Mutant Enemy writing stable.

The DVD set is non-anamorphic, but features spectacularly good cast & crew commentary on each episode, the original pilot script, cast auditions, deleted scenes and a “behind the scenes” featurette. 

My only complaint is that the show only did 13 episodes in Season One; Season Two appears to be wrapping up next week with a similarly short season.

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HBO is reprising the first season of The Wire, with a second season getting ready to roll in June.  The series, which has also received much critical acclaim, is by David Simon, the creator of NBC’s Homicide: Life On the Street.  Set once again in the middle of the Baltimore PD, the show feels a lot like “Homicide: The Next Generation”.  If you enjoyed the original series, you’ll probably enjoy this as well. 

Simon, the series creator, was a crime-beat newspaper reporter in Baltimore who received a unique opportunity to spend a year with the night shift of Baltimore’s homicide squad.  His outstanding book giving his account of the experience, “Homicide, A Year on the Killing Streets” was the basis of the NBC series, and the new HBO venue appears to have given him even more freedom to bring his experience of the Byzantine world of Baltimore PD to life on the small screen.

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As long as I’m recapping police series (I do watch other stuff too), also worth a mention this year is NBC’s “Boomtown“.  The show’s Wellesian “gimmic”, replaying scenes through the POV of different cast members (and occasionally the victims and perpetrators as well) has been toned down somewhat since the early episodes of the season, and the show hangs together well on the basis of its character development and the occasional multi-POV sequence placed where it will do the most good.