Anyone watch this? It's the first cop show I've actually liked in YEARS. Started watching last season, but I still need to rent the first seasons.
Excellent cast and characters. It's not about single crime they cover in depth per episode, it's more about the ongoing stories of the cops and detectives and their perspectives of what goes on.
Last night was the second of the season.

This is weird as I was coming on to ask if anyone knew what the US police series was called I saw early one morning on UK TV and I think this is it! It is very good and quite gritty.

I've never watched "Southland" but I'm curious to know what makes this different from the tons of other cop shows that are on the air now and from those in the past.

I love Southland fantastic show

I've just 'found' the first series

I thought this was about Southland Corporation AKA 7-11.. :smirk:

Very well written, likeable, but realistically flawed, characters. The show is pretty hard hitting, but it isn't all serious. It's got some great humor in it, although it can be fairly dark humor at times.
Lucy Liu joined the cast this season, a nice addition.
Last night there was a streaker out for a run in broad daylight. The patrolling cops told him there was an ordinance against doing that in the city. He needed to get on the freeway.
They called CHP to deal with him then. LOL

I'll warn you now: C Thomas Howell is in it. He's a weak link in the acting dept, but his character is written to be so obnoxious that it works.

I really like this show as well, it's on late enough too that it can cross a line every now and then.

Dunno exactly...but somehow it's a bit different. And entertaining.

I think it gives a better view into how what we the public see, vs what a cop would see. What happens 15 seconds before the Youtube video starts. What happened to the cop on a call earlier in the day.

Usually they show a scene unfolding before you, then the show starts earlier that day, or that week. Towards the end of the episode, you then can see the leadup to and including the scene shown earlier, and then the aftermath, the consequences. It's kind of like showing the politician's "sound bite", then showing the entire speech, where you may get a very different context and better understanding of what they meant and why.

It also seems to give a more "real world" idea of what detective work must be like...less "Clue/Whodunit/SherlockHolmes", and more "many random cases, most just waiting for more clues, put it together when we have more info/evidence". More cooperation and coordination with the beat cops than you normally see.

Dunno, I just think that while there are more chills and thrills than would be realistic, at least the presentation of it, and the dialogue/characters seem more real, more like what I'd expect. Good show, good dialogue, great action/shootouts, IMO better quality all 'round than most "action movies".

But bar none, the actual scenarios these cops find themselves in, in the show, seem like they were literally taken from police incident reports (maybe even LAPD), not the imaginations of some dopey writer typing on his laptop in a Starbucks sipping a latte. I'm sure the writers of this show do that too, but instead of relying solely on their imaginations, they seem to actually talk with real cops about real situations and how those actually go down. THAT is what makes this a good show IMO.

Funny that this is the first thread I saw on here, I just watched the season finale from last March. The last 2 episodes had been sitting on there since then because I haven't had a chance to catch up on it. Finally decided a week or two ago that since the new season was about to start that it was time to watch the last couple of episodes. I think NBC should have held onto it, but TNT caught a gem when they decided to keep making new episodes.