On Netflix streaming, check out **“Intelligence.” **it’s a Canadian series somewhat like “The Wire” but more serious in tone and a little less fun. but still very well done and engrossing
FTW!!
Damages
Rome
Breaking Bad
Sons of Anarchy
Deadwood
In order:
The Shield
Deadwood
Damages
After this, Dexter is fun, but I’d put it in with stuff for someone who liked Dead Like Me (series, NOT the movie).
To add to the echo chamber:
The Shield
Breaking Bad
Deadwood
I thought Justified was hugely disappointing.
Justified is as good as a weekly crime procedural is going to get, which is nowhere near good enough to compete with the list from the OP, IMO. My recommendations are unoriginal:
Deadwood
Breaking Bad
Rome
Dexter
Spartacus
Damages
The spaces are to denote a drop in quality from one group to the next. Rome and Dexter are two of my favorite shows of all time, so I think I tend to artificially elevate their quality in my mind. Spartacus starts off very weak, bordering on downright terrible. By the end of the first season, though, it has crossed over into real quality, bordering on great. Damages is very good but a bit frenetic. The first season was the best.
My original contribution to the thread is to tally up all the responses so far. I tallied votes against as -1, (eg: Deadwood was overblown,) and lukewarm votes as a half a vote, (eg: Dexter is good if you don’t take it seriously.)
9 Breaking Bad
9 Deadwood
4 Rome
4 The Shield
3 Dexter
3 Damages
2 Six Feet Under
2 Spartacus: Blood and Sand
2 Rescue Me
2 Sons of Anarchy
1 Nip/Tuck
1 Intelligence
1 The Corner
0 Justified
(Justfied got 2 for and 2 against.)
I loved Breaking Bad, Sons Of Anarchy, Rome and to a lesser degree, Dexter.
I did not care for Deadwood. The dialog wore me out. I watched season 1&2, did not like it enough to watch the last season.
How about Battlestar Galactica? Netflix will stream them.
I don’t think of Justified as a crime procedural. In my mind, CSI and Law and Order are procedurals. There’s some crime in Justified and the lead character is a cop, but the focus isn’t on solving crime so much as on the relationships.
It is most definitely a crime procedural, with a criminal-of-the-week “A” plot that gets solved/resolved every week. There was definitely a season-long arc, but not much more than there is on, say, Bones.
Ellis Dee, I disagree, but only sorta. With shows like CSI and Law and Order, you can watch individual episodes without feeling like you’ve missed anything. Shows like Justified focus just as much (or more) on back stories and relationships. There can be episodes with no crime to solve and they’re still interesting.
On the other hand, it could just be the gritty, non-glossy look that makes those shows seem so different.
A repeat of Friday’s first episode of Blue Bloods is almost over and it looks promising. The day-to-day lives of a five-generation family of NYC cops wrapped around a police procedural and a Serpico-style story.
Make that a four-generation family. Sometimes I can’t count.
Intelligence is indeed wonderful (though I wouldn’t compare it to the Wire since the range of topics is much more limited). But it is well worth it.
Brotherhood is also terrific.
I watched the first season of Breaking Bad, and I really don’t get why there’s so much love for it. The Shield all the way.
We found that watching with closed-captioning turned on helped enormously, without any diminishing effects. It really is brilliant dialog and you don’t want to miss a word of it.
Although it was canceled after two seasons, I thought The Riches was a high quality show worthy of this list.