Widespread concerns over policing after the killing of George Floyd did not end the police drama as we know it. But shows are evolving to reflect the new climate.
Jimmy Smits on the set of “East New York,” a new CBS police show developed after the killing of George Floyd that aims to take a more nuanced view of policing.Credit…George Etheredge for The New York Times
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By Marc Tracy
In 2020 the police killings of George Floyd and other Black people spurred many Americans to take a hard look at the police. Including the police on TV.
Two ride-along reality programs, including the decades-old “Cops,” were taken off the air. The police comedy “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” rethought its final season. As critics called for a radical re-examination of what some called “copaganda” shows, the actor, writer and director Issa Rae told The Hollywood Reporter that if she were writing one, she would make it about community policing. “Hopefully,” she said, it would be “a boring, uneventful show that would get canceled.”
Two years later, it is clear that rumors of the cop show’s demise were greatly exaggerated. “Cops” is back, now on the Fox Nation streaming service. Eighteen crime-related programs are slated for prime-time slots on the major broadcast networks; three of the five most-viewed scripted network shows last season featured law enforcement (a fourth was about firefighters). The industry’s attitude was perhaps summarized at the Emmy Awards ceremony in September, when stars from the “Law & Order” franchise were introduced by the comedian Sam Jay as “two cops no one wants to see defunded.”
But beneath the surface, there are signs that the genre has been evolving in response to the current climate, which saw public trust in law enforcement reach a record low two years ago, even as a political backlash to some of the sharpest slogans, like “Defund the Police,” began to form.
A new hourlong police drama called “East New York,” which premiered Sunday evening on CBS, is part of a wave of crime shows that have been developed or rethought since Floyd’s death. It aims to explore the world of law enforcement in a more nuanced way, even featuring plotlines about, yes, community policing. One of its stars, Jimmy Smits, who was on the more in-your-face “N.Y.P.D. Blue” in the 1990s, said he was drawn to “East New York” by the chance to tell a different kind of policing story.
“The whole idea of law enforcement’s role with regard to, ‘To protect and serve,’ to be a guardian as opposed to a warrior, the idea that law enforcement is supposed to be in the community to protect it, is something I think we’re estranged from,” said Smits, who grew up in the real East New York, a Brooklyn neighborhood, and who plays a police chief on the show.
Just as the breakup of the Soviet Union did not signal the end of history and the Sept. 11 attacks did not end irony, suggestions that the police killing of George Floyd might doom the traditional cop show were overstated. But series like “East New York” raise the question of whether cop shows can answer calls for reform — of both policing and television’s depictions of it — without losing the viewers that have kept them so popular.
“Cop shows have been around since the Flood — it’s always been a part of television programming,” said William Finkelstein, an “East New York” co-creator and executive producer whose writing credits include the genre landmarks “Law & Order” and “N.Y.P.D. Blue.” “But in the wake of George Floyd and the enormous outrage that evoked, particularly as it was directed against cops and policing policy, the question was: ‘How do you do a cop show?’”
On cable and streaming, in some cases, one answer stands out: The same as before. “Cops” had run since 1989, first on Fox and then on Paramount Network, before it was taken off the air in June 2020; now it is a favorite of Fox Nation viewers, who watched the start of a new season Friday night.
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