Crime & Cop Shows

Bochco, who died Sunday, created numerous series, including Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue. TV Critic David Bianculli looks back on Bochco's impact, then we listen to his 1989 Fresh Air interview.

Ballers feels like the football equivalent of the hip-hop world of Empire, and The Brink is reminiscent of Dr. Strangelove, but has its own modern take on the nonsense of war.

The show revolves around a murder case in which nearly all the characters are part victim and part aggressor. Creator John Ridley and actor Benito Martinez explain.

The new CBS show about two very mismatched investigative partners plays like a comedy. The characters are complicated and surprising, and the dialogue is crisp and quick. It's "a lot of fun to watch."

The British series is set during and after World War II. Detective Foyle tackles crimes connected to the war -- murder and spying, black markets and profiteering. It's "terrifically entertaining."

In 1981, NBC presented a new police series that went on to make TV history. Hill Street Blues has just been released on DVD in its entirety for the first time.

The show's season-long crime story follows a busload of kids whose field trip gets detoured by kidnappers. Critic David Bianculli says it could wind up being just as good — and intense-- as 24.

Fresh Air TV critic David Bianculli says two new miniseries this week are worth special mention — and couldn't be more different. The Spoils Of Babylon is a miniseries soap-opera spoof on IFC; True Detective looks like the best HBO drama since The Wire.

In the new FX series, Bichir plays a Mexican detective who teams up with an El Paso cop to solve a series of murders. He tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies that The Bridge aims to give equal treatment to both sides of the border.

On July 10, FX adds another dark serialized drama to an already rich cable crop: The Bridge, starring Diane Kruger. Like The Killing, it's based on a Scandinavian television series.

Jane Campion directs a new Sundance Channel miniseries, Top of the Lake, about a young New Zealand detective played by Mad Men's Elisabeth Moss. Meanwhile, producers from Lost and Friday Night Lights team up to create a prequel to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, called Bates Motel.

The actor stars in a new Fox series about a former FBI agent asked to help apprehend a serial killer he once put behind bars. The series is well done, but the violence in it is alarming — especially for network television.

Norris plays DEA agent Hank Schrader in the AMC series about a chemistry teacher turned meth cook. "He's a good cop, he just hasn't put the pieces together yet," Norris says.

Car 54, Where Are You?, the TV comedy series about a mythical police station in the Bronx, was created by Nat Hiken in 1961. It's just appeared for the first time on DVD to the delight of fans, including critic Lloyd Schwartz.

The new NBC drama stars Jason Isaacs as a man who survives a terrible car accident with either his wife or child. He's living one existence, and dreaming the other -- but which is real? It's a lot of work for the viewer, but critic David Bianculli has faith in the show's creators.

The British musical private-eye drama, which first aired in 1986, starred Michael Gambon as a novelist hospitalized with a horrible skin condition who tries to write a Hollywood screenplay in his mind. David Bianculli explains why the miniseries is "TV's most polished, audacious masterpiece."

The star of Showtime's bloody crime drama talks about the show's eventual plans for an ending — and also about matters both professional and personal, from how he plays an emotionless killer to how Hall himself, while filming Dexter, has dealt with both cancer and a divorce.

The actor plays a righteous federal agent who succumbs to all sorts of temptations on the HBO drama Boardwalk Empire. To build the character of Nelson Van Alden, he says, he worked out an elaborate back story about the agent's childhood.