I am a fan, as many of the readers of this blog know, of police shows — for the same reason that the director Sidney Lumet likes to make movies about cops. There is a built-in tension, built-in conflict that creates an energy that can carry the narrative.
My favorite shows — Homicide, NYPD Blue (the first season, in particular), Barney Miller, The Naked City, even the less serious Starsky and Hutch and the ’70s PI shows — used the crime motif to create this tension and play characters off each other in interesting ways.
So I was interested to see what Detroit 1-8-7 had to offer. I missed the opening episode last week, but caught it last night — and was tremendously disappointed. It wasn’t because it was a bad show. It was, in fact, pretty decent. It’s just that we’ve seen it before. All of the standard tropes were there — the cranky veteran detective, the put-upon squad leader, the new man on the job trying to win his colleagues over. The stereotypes were shuffled — women were in charge, for instance — but it didn’t go much beyond what we might have seen on any other show. And while we are watching something alleged to be taking place in Detroit — an overwhelmingly black city — the show could take place just about anywhere.
The best cop shows play off their home base — Homicide using the specific political dysfunction of Baltimore, for instance. That’s what makes Memphis Beat so interesting — its locale cannot be mistaken for many other places. It is a show built on particulars.
Detroit 1-8-7 might get better — it certainly has the potential. It’s just not there at the moment.
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- Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. it can be ordered here.
- Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Hank Kalet 