Per the other thread about the least violent cop shows, what were the most violent? What shows set the high water mark for violence and gunplay?
Do not include private detective shows, just cop shows.
Gunsmoke, back before Marshall Dillon stopped telling people to “drop it” and he made them drop it instead.
Don’t know about “ever” but right now that NCIS-LA show is ridiculous. tons of people get shot every episode, including lots of innocent bystnaders - or at least they did when my daughter forced me to watch it with her.
Deadwood was mostly about a cop, or at least (frontier) justice.
Miami Vice has to be near the top of the list. I think I only ever saw maybe three episodes of it, and every one of them had multiple automatic-weapons shootouts.
The Shield has got to be right up there. Some shocking violence on that show.
Hawaii 5-0 (the new one) murders suspects every week.
The Shield’s violence is shocking because it’s fairly realistic - but it isn’t as frequent as the impact makes you think it is. Definitely not like a show like Miami Vice.
…I find myself wanting to start a thread about the rootin’-tootin’est Westerns… 
The Untouchables. That show was so violent, it was controversial at the time when shoot-'em-up westerns ruled the tube.
That show had more “railing kill” shots than anything before or since. If anyone went up the stairs in that show, you knew they were dead before they hit the ground.
I was going to nominate The Untouchables, as well, so I’ll just add that it wasn’t just shootings. There were bombings, knifings, you name it.
At the same time, there was a series called Bus Stop that was supposedly canceled because of a horrifying episodeabout an axe-wielding teenage psychopath.
Strike Force was very short-lived, but in its brief run it was shockingly violent, both in the violence that the cops used on the criminals and in the violence used towards victims.
SWAT had lots of violence.
There was a short-lived series called Wanted, about a team of cops tracking down the most wanted criminals in LA. Very violent, and IIRC they assassinated a bunch of the guys they found.
Walker Texas Ranger probably had more cops shot and shootings by cops than the entire history of Texas and several neighboring states.
Speaking of Miami Vice and shootingest cop shows, this clip comes to mind. Just unbelievable what some of those IPSC guys can do with a pistol.
From current tv Hawaii Five-0 seems to have a pretty liberal view on the value of police violence.
I think the goal was to eliminate every other cop in Texas so for its final season, it would be Walker, Lone Ranger.
The thing about “The Untouchables” was that you never saw any blood. I remember in one early episode, a guy took a full burst from a Tommy gun; the wall behind him erupted with bullet impacts, but there wasn’t so much as a single hole in his suit, and not even one drop of blood. (In real life, he would have been cut in two, literally.)
“The Untouchables” (and I’m referring here ONLY to the series with Robert Stack as Eliot Ness) toned down the violence after the first year and a half, seriously weakening the show, IMHO.
Much the same thing happened with “The Sopranos.” I don’t think any season of that show was near as bloody as the first.
Something about quality and quantity comes to mind. I’ll add that The Shield is also very graphic. I guess I’d rate a show with realistic, graphic violence at a less frequent rate, more violent than a show with a lot of not that graphic shootouts.