ACAB-adjacent TV series: help me find them

I like tv shows where the plot revolves around solving a mystery or crime and uncovering stuff, so I end up watching a lot of cop shows ... and I feel kinda gross about that. Are there good mystery/detective type shows where the cops are portrayed as shit and/or seriously explore the idea that cops are shit?

https://www.mediaplaynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Police-Squad-Little-Italy.jpg

It's not at all a mystery/detective series but Too Old to Die Young might be the most ACAB series of all time.

obviously in yr Sherlock Holmeses and Miss Marpleses the cops are often portrayed as dumb fucks

I don't know why but the irony is just now hitting me re: that thing where the composer of 'Cop Killer' has spent the bulk of his career playing a cop on TV.

Sledge Hammer seems pretty prescient in retrospect

top of the lake

Are films acceptable for this thread? The film noir period (and the early gangster film cycle, before the Motion Picture Production Code developed an enforcement mechanism) showed some staggering examples of police corruption.

As for comic ineptitude, two words: "Keystone Kops."

If movies are OK, my memory is that the movie Copland was essentially exactly this.

The Shield, though of course some of the cops in that are "mavericks who get results"

top of the lake

s1 of this is >>>>

yeah I've only seen season 1 actually. but it's great

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_%26_Order_(British_TV_series)

The series was highly controversial upon its release due to its depiction of a corrupt British law enforcement and legal system.[2] There was such an outcry regarding the series in the British press (perhaps hinting at the - alleged - historic, and continuing, close ties between press and police) that the BBC was prevented from trying to sell the series abroad.[4]

John Cooper, QC, writing in The Times, described the series as 'Seismic', continuing to say that 'at the time [the plays] provoked calls from MPs for Newman to be arrested for sedition and the summoning of the director-general of the BBC to the Home Office to explain himself.'[8]

I think Line of Duty might qualify here though its more a rotten apple or three than the whole barrel

like I started watching the British Netflix series, The Stranger, and one of the characters is a retired cop whose wife "left him" and later it turns out why yes, cops are more likely to be perpetrators of domestic violence that in this case included beating his wife to death and hiding the body in the wall of his house ACAB is otm

https://i.pinimg.com/474x/ca/27/4f/ca274fef1c73ec1a7eeb957b392337f9.jpg

... this is on London Live all the time, in case any Freeview users living in the London area are reading this thread and want to watch typically crappy 70s British movie.

If movies are OK, my memory is that the movie Copland was essentially exactly this.

Rewatched this year, and yes. Deaf, doughy Stallone is a local sheriff "good cop," but it's a significant point that he's snowed by the suburban-commuting-to-NYC real police (the likes of Liotta, Keitel and the T2) due to indoctrination in copaganda.

ACAB(EC) is becoming a cliche, but Columbo is "solving a mystery or crime and uncovering stuff" every single episode, with 99% of the moiderers being rich white scum who 100% think their privilege will protect them. And as of the one I most recently watched, he has been avoiding taking his annual firearm exam for ten years because he doesn't want to even touch a gun for five minutes.

on a similar note, doesn’t matlock often entail the cops being shown as dumb and ineffectual and their work easily done by an old lawyer dude?

Red Riding Trilogy

There was a BBC TV series called The Cops in the late 90s which was so ACAB-adjacent that it's never been released on DVD. Seek it out if you can, it's fantastic.

terriers (fx, 2010, one perfect season)

greatest show

I love Terriers! ... and yr rec, anagram, sounds like what I totally want

Copland is so great, Stallone is wonderful in it

I keep misreading it and thinking, "Sylvester Stallone was in a movie about composer Aaron Copland?"

he's got range

Yes to sic's Columbo rec, and I will add Rockford Files which, while not a cop show, entails many of the same tropes and often involves Rockford, PI (an ex-con, also notoriously gunshy) getting endlessly hassled by the cops. His friend Officer Dennis is basically dece but he's not above pulling his own ACAB shit when the situation warrants.

Maybe there are other good PI shows, as well. Civilians doing the work that the dumb cops can't fucken handle.

I should rewatch Copland after only just realizing in the past year how much I kinda love Stallone.

Between the Lines is pre-Line of Duty BBC show about anti-cop-cops. By the end of the second season more or less everyone is dead or fired or implicated in Seriously Bad Deeds. It's a pretty cheesy, early example of "difficult men" antihero tropes, but I love the BBC's 80s/90s approximation of a grimy aesthetic and the scripts are good IIRC (it's being repeated on BBC4 right now).

Terriers is awesome.

Another film, but The Choirboys (1977) shows LA cops basically to be insufferable pieces of shit, which was against the intentions of the author of the book The Choirboys (Joseph Wambaugh) the film's based on but very much the intention of the film's director, Robert Aldrich.

ooooooh awesome!

The Cops was a really good show, anagram otm

Some good talk about Terriers here: DONAL LOGUE POLL

Terrific show and if it seems like you would like it, absolutely check it out - worth going the distance on.

not totally ACAB but pretty radical, interesting and well worth viewing: The Spook Who Sat by the Door

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BynXfREPG8

In a similar vein, I just watched 1972's Top of the Heap yesterday and it was both ACAB AF and fantastic.

https://www.limitedruns.com/media/cache/ec/01/ec0136f2ba2083931776d9751b1a52ad.jpg

That's a great one, too.

hell yeah TOTH is great