It would be overstating things to say that Cold Case is a direct remake or adaptation of Cold Squad – there’s not a direct isomorphism, like there is with the U.S. adaptations of Cracker or Touching Evil. It’s just very, very similar. I don’t want to say it’s a rip-off, exactly… (Jerry Bruckheimer has said that he’d never heard of Cold Squad. I guess it’s possible that the most popular Canadian contemporary crime drama running might utterly escape his attention, and they might develop something strikingly similar anyway.)
I mean, Lily isn’t Ali – she just looks somewhat similar and has the same job description and some colleagues that fit more-or-less the same archetypes. Ali’s character is a bit different – certainly more realistic. She’s older, and, although she’s pretty hot, she doesn’t look quite so much like she decided to become a cop after the modelling thing didn’t work out. Ali is the “sensitive” lead, but she’s tougher than Lilly and doesn’t telegraph the empathetic stuff quite so much. She usually waits until no-one’s looking to get dewy-eyed, if she’s gonna do it – and she doesn’t do it so frequently.
There are definite differences in conception – Lilly is very much defined by the whole “lone woman in a man’s world” thing, and Ali just happens to have boobs and a hooha. There are some other strong female characters, too. Another big difference is that there are no flashbacks in Cold Squad – and certainly no musical epilogues or any of the other “formula” stuff that every episode of Cold Case relies on – no tricksie stuff with the witnesses or collateral victims flipping back and forth between their “real” age and the age they were when the crimes took place, no choreographed relabeling of the banker’s box as “CLOSED,” none of that. These are, as it happens, the things that seem cheesy to me about Cold Case.
I think the main difference, apart from that, is that Cold Squad is much, much grittier. The language is pretty raw, sometimes. The actors are (IMO) much more capable, too. This show has made me into a wreck a few times. The scenes with Ali or Lilly interrogating the suspects, though? Those are the ones where Cold Case feels most like a slightly prettied-up version of Cold Squad.
The only time I ever remember seeing Cold Squad do something really stylized was one episode where Ali was interrogating a particularly smug serial rapist/murderer. They did a strange sort of thing where she was playing into his distorted view of women – sluttish and waifish. There was some extremely atypical atmospheric lighting and a series of fantasy-like costume changes for Ali. Elaborate stuff involving wigs and very fetishy kit. After she drew a confession out of him by making him feel like he was in control and then suddenly emasculating him, they switched back to the regular fluorescenty-looking lighting and her normal clothes and makeup. Very strange, that episode – as if David Lynch dropped by to direct for a bit.
And then there was last night, when holy crap she deliberately unloaded into that guy when he was tied to chair!
Sorry, I’m still in shock.