I don’t know what you’d call it, but L&O: Small Town. I realize that Dick Wolf probably just doesn’t know a lot about small towns, so he has taken this concept the reality show direction with Cold Justice, a show which was pretty interesting the first season when they were actually solving cases, but they have, it seems, run out of cold cases that a rogue team can solve in a week.
And yes, I realize this is sort of what Criminal Minds did, except they investigated some bizarre serial killer every week.
I’d like to see “ripped from the headlines” fictionalized episodes of small town crimes with small town characters every week, in towns that reflected the actual environment where they occurred, instead of transplanting the crime to NYC every week.
If it requires a contrivance like a fictionalized character modeled on the former DA in Cold Justice, who farms herself out helping solve difficult crimes, just so there was a consistent character for the audience to identify with, do that. Or you could even contrive a private detective who serves, say a 4-state area such as Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana-Illinois. You’d get a huge mix of different kinds of people and settings there-- KY is almost the south, IN is two different places depending on whether you are north or south, and then, Indianapolis is a unique city, because it is so centrally located, it hosts a huge variety of conferences and symposia. Yearly, it hosts a table-top gaming convention, it has hosted Orthodox Jews, The National Federation of the Blind, and then there is the Indy 500 every year. IL gives you the once-a-season Chicago story, and rural Illinois is almost the south as well. Ohio has several big cities, and between IN & Ohio, there are three or four major theme parks, and one in KY as well.
Then, of course, if she were making headlines, she might occasionally get invited somewhere else. It’s TV. You could work in a small town anywhere that way.
I’d prefer they stuck to modeling on recent cases, but the occasional cold case is nice. L&O: TOS did that.
I might be biased, because I’m originally from Manhattan, and I find big cities bright, open, and safe, and small town suspicious and creepy, but that’s my take.
), showing exactly what I mean.