I love American reality cop shows. These late night slices of US dementia send me to bed happy in the knowledge that however bad things are here, America has it worse. Or better - if you like guns, car chases down dirt roads leading from nowhere to nowhere, drugs tossed from windows, and tyres gunned down to sparking metal. The night-vision on-foot chases by crooks too fat to run and cops too fat to chase, who both eventually collapse in a loving handcuff embrace, are moments of pathos and beauty; confirmation - should anybody still need it - that this planet is on its last legs.
British cop shows get it wrong. There's too much self-awareness and playing it by the book for the cameras. US shows are often filmed from automatic cameras inside the cars, so it's one cop pulling over several seriously bad eggs in the middle of nowhere and arresting the lot of them - it doesn't always say why. I am not a right-wing maniac, or in the midst of an homoerotic fantasy - well, maybe - but US cops wear non-negotiable mirror shades that reflect the endless highway and out-of-luck stare of the sap they're busting, porn-star moustaches, and mullet hairstyles under state trooper hats, and they set up road blocks for felons just escaped from the state pen. They use maverick intuition, and improvise manoeuvres that end with them shooting each other with stun guns. Then they do interviews about taking each other down in the line of duty.
There are some properly disturbing scenes on these shows. The unarmed, short police woman challenging an armed-to-the teeth bank robber and refusing to let him go, until an even more armed-to-the-teeth member of the public - casually strolling out of Dunkin' Donuts - comes to her rescue. Or the convenience store worker being shot on CCTV: disturbing until the Marlboro Cowboy-voiced narrator explained that the crook was actually "saving this guy's life - if he hadn't been shot and rushed to hospital, they'd never have discovered the huge tumour in his stomach".
These shows will not appeal to everyone, and must be watched with a huge dash of irony. They are, however, easy on the eye, hugely entertaining, and might dissuade you from busting a six-pack, robbing a bank and breaking for the border in your pick-up truck.
