Friday, May 10, 2013

On The Air: Cops (1989)

It is the longest running series in the history of the Fox network, ahead of The Simpsons by about a year and a half, but as this current television season draws to a close, Cops is bidding the network farewell and headed to cable.

When Jack Webb brought Dragnet to television after a lengthy radio run, he taught viewers just how police work is done. Cops, in effect, took the concept to the next level. The series criss-crossed the country, following actual police patrols, and recording arrests for broadcast. When Cops resumes production, it will air on Spike TV, as this was a case of the inevitable other shoe dropping. Fox had dropped America's Most Wanted a couple of years back, and watched that series move to cable, specificially Lifetime, which recently cancelled the series themselves. Cops reruns air in syndication and on a number of cable outlets, including Tru TV. You just can't escape it.

CopsTV (naturally) uploaded a sample clip from a show taped in Las Vegas:



Inner Circle cracked the charts with "Bad Boys", which became the show's theme. I'll find the video and post it another time.

Rating: A-.

4 comments:

magicdog said...

I hadn't heard the show was cancelled, but Spike TV will pick up the slack.

CMT has also runs COPS in which they pare it down to specific episodes ("hardest takedowns", etc.) and they use their own supers/graphics which is different from what airs on FOX.

I never get tired of this show! I noticed how the show evolved since it first began back in '89. They used to show more of the cops' personal lives in the beginning, but moved focus back to the streets full time by season 2-3.

Like any other TV show, this series had its share of favorite cops, and favorite busts.

The folks behind this show also have sister shows called, "Las Vegas Jailhouse" and "Vegas Strip" (which focuses on patrols on the Las Vegas Strip). They're a riot!

hobbyfan said...

Spike picked up MyNetworkTV's ill-fated Cops ripoff, Jail, after that was cancelled, so maybe they'll couple the two once Cops moves over.

Too bad they rarely, if at all, bothered to come to the Northeast...

magicdog said...

It seems they'd made many trips back east - Buffalo, NYC, Jersey City, NJ, Pittsburgh, Philly, and Boston.

Although it's been a while since Boston!

Maybe they just get more action (and better weather) in the Western states.

I know it was a REALLY long time before they were able to film with the NYPD.

hobbyfan said...

All that says is that once again, my home district gets Rodney'd (no respect, like Rodney Dangerfield). Like, there were zillions of opportunities to come to Albany, Troy, et al, but nooooooo!