How do you prefer your police officers? Prompt, intelligent and honest would seem desirable qualities — and The Shield's Vic Mackey possesses two of those.
He's certainly a fast thinker and a ruthless plotter when it comes to neutralising bad guys in his Los Angeles precinct.
Unfortunately, his methodology borders
on sadism and his ethics are so bent they appear to have left the building, gone round the block and shot off down the highway.
But Vic, his crooked crew and their singular take on rough justice provide seat-edge drama which is highly satisfying television — so why, with the recent arrival of the third series on TV2 on Thursdays, is it on so late, at 10.30pm?
Apparently, according to a spokesperson for TV2, we Kiwis haven't taken to it in great numbers.
"While it had a loyal audience, the ratings it was generating were not high enough for a 9.30 slot — it did not have broad enough appeal for TV2 to keep it there.
"But as it is an excellent series we did not want to take it off air completely ... and loyal followers of The Shield have turned up to watch it."
Good. Cops breaking the rules to sidetrack bureaucracy and crack the hard nuts have always been compelling screen heroes.
Andy Sipowicz in NYPD Blue was a classic, and going further back into the mists of time, Dirty Harry was the godfather of them all.
The Aussies, too, with their record of police corruption, have had some ripe material for terrifyingly realistic cop shows over the past couple of decades, but New Zealand film-makers would be hard-pressed for bad-cop inspiration, thank goodness.
Real life is a solid basis for drama, and Vic Mackey and his brutal antics are more related to true events than you'd imagine.
When The Shield first screened in the United States in 2002, family campaigners screamed foul, the US military and the LAPD protested, and advertisers pulled the plug.
But it turns out The Shield was based on a huge, still-ongoing corruption scandal in the LAPD's Rampart division.
In the mid-90s, the Rampart unit in the LAPD found itself so unable to crack gang crime in the city, it created elite squads called Crash — "Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums".
Crash was all too effective, with its officers going so deep into the culture of the gangs that many became corrupt, brutal and psychotic.
Their wrongdoings were eventually exposed when one of its leaders, Rafael Perez, on whom the character of Vic Mackey is partly based, was caught stealing a million dollars of coke from a police evidence room.
From there, the house of cards fell, and the investigation continues, with 75 officers so far implicated and 3000 more to be investigated, according to a report in the Guardian.
And so the cries of "not fair" have died in the US, and The Shield has apparently become quite popular with the LAPD.
Compared to Perez, Mackey — played by the intense, bullet-headed Emmy-winning Michael Chiklis — seems relatively benign. He looks out for his mates, and cares about his autistic son.
He is looking to the future as well. Through stealing a large quantity of cash from a gang, he is (he thinks) in possession of a nice pension fund.
Whatever, The Shield is high-quality viewing if you want well-acted, well-written drama about flawed individuals operating in a most difficult environment.
I can't stay up till 11.30pm on Thursday nights to watch it, but I will be setting the video recorder every week. Why don't you give it a go as well?
How do you prefer your police officers? Prompt, intelligent and honest would seem desirable qualities — and The Shield's Vic Mackey possesses two of those.
He's certainly a fast thinker and a ruthless plotter when it comes to neutralising bad guys in his Los Angeles precinct.
Unfortunately, his methodology borders
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