Crime pays, especially if you are a TV executive at Channel 5. Currently 5 are running six cop shows, CSI, CSI Miami, Boomtown, Law & Order, Law & Order Special Victims Unit and The Shield.
<*dv_2*> Until now I had dismissed these programmes as cheap imported US tack bulking out Channel 5s risible schedule, however at the urgings of my dad I have started watching The Shield, and, well actually its really quite good.
<*dv_0*> Rather than being yet another derivative cop show, The Shield actually does something a little different. Lost count of the number of hard as nails rule bending cops, well The Shield takes this one step further.
The central character, Detective Vic Mackie is utterly corrupt. Mackie, who looks like Ross Kemps genetic twin, runs a small team of corrupt cops who spend their days running a covert drug empire whilst trying to avoid colleagues who suspect that he might not be a paragon of virtue.
As you are not necessarily going to have much sympathy for Mackie the programme introduces tension in two ways. Mackies corrupt colleagues are portrayed as half witted incompetents who would be lost without him babysitting them. His right hand man is played by a buck toothed dead ringer for Kevin Dillon with that same look of open-mouthed ignorant bemusement. Each week Mackies double role as cop and criminal looks like ending in disaster as runs the risk of being exposed as a corrupt cop or being rubbed out by rival drug dealers. With his world constantly on the verge of collapse there is a perverse pleasure in seeing how Mackie manages to extricate himself from his latest crisis.
<*dv_3*> The Shield is not one of the great cop shows, but itll pass the time until the next one comes along. |
