The cop show that changed them all
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The Shield.
If you haven’t watched the groundbreaking drama
The Shield since it first aired in 2002, or if it’s your first viewing, strap in – this police drama about corruption in the fictional LA suburb of Farmington is the very definition of gritty. Even the theme music is mildly assaulting.
It opens in fairly standard police procedural style – plain-clothes cops chasing a “perp”, a drug bust, some wisecracks as they make their arrest – but by the end of the first episode, there’s been a homicide, a drug addict selling his child to a paedophile, and, most scandalously, a police officer murdered by a fellow cop. This is not