Southland

This show is amazing. I literally stumbled upon it during the 2020 holidays while I was off work with nothing much to do due to laying low and staying safe from the COVID. This series was a holiday treat! I literally am embarrassed to say how fast I watched it but it was THAT GOOD. And I am a tough person to get sucked into a tv binge. This show grabs you from the first couple of minutes. The characters have a lot of depth and the acting is great for a TV series!! This show was a launch pad for a bunch of great actors that are now hugely well known. The storyline is thought provoking and very relatable to our continued and current cultural issues where people are still refusing to practice tolerance and acceptance. This show depicts the desperate need to demand equality. When I realized this show was almost a decade old and still, today, we suffer from the same national struggle that sickens me, these same issues of racial profiling and global discrimination will definitely be upsetting when watching southland but this show has a soul that makes HOPE seem like it just might be an actual possibility. Enjoy!

Obviously a tv show will have some dramatic elements, but overall this was one of the most accurate cop shows made at that time. I have retired and I suspect the job isn't as enjoyable as it was in the 80's through early 2000's, but the creators got this show right. The themes, the attitudes, personalities and overall feeling of the job are very well done. Southland and Bosch do a great job of getting the details right when it comes to police stories.

I think Southland deserves to be considered amongst the great series: The Sopranos, The Wire, Breaking Bad, Deadwood, Better Call Saul, Rome, Dexter, Oz, Lilyhammer, Boardwalk Empire, Game of Thrones, Ray Donovan and Peaky Blinders. It is also, arguably, the most underrated. It should never have been on NBC, which NBC realized, and then it went to cable at TNT. It flourished creatively, in its 4 seasons there, but never found it's audience. If this show had been on HBO, I think more people would have found it and sung its praises. Even Emmy didn't see what an incredible cast the show had and what brilliant writing it employed. Also, unlike so many long-running series, it's final Season 5 was its best. It was not supposed to be its final Season, TNT decided to cancel it, which only goes to show the unfulfilled promise that lay ahead.

There was not a single bad performance with any cast regulars, but Michael Cudlitz and Regina King stand out, closely followed by Shawn Hattoy and Ben McKenzie. C. Thomas Howell blows it out of the water in a supporting role and Lucy Liu and Gerald McRaney nail it in guest spots. The scenes with Cudlitz and McRaney, S5 E7, Heroes, is the stuff that should be taught in acting classes and should have garnered both Emmy nominations.

Best Season: 5 Best Episodes: Season 5, E7, 8, 9 and 10.

Southland is absolutely one of the best cop dramas to ever be made! There are thousands of cop shows out there to choose from but this is among the best and most original I've ever seen. The cast is excellent and make it a very believable show. It really is one of the more underrated shows in television history!

I work in the field, and I was genuinely impressed. Based on the pilot this show looks like it could be excellent. What strikes me is the focus on the very real impact of the job on the officers. In the real world, an officer doesn't fire his or her weapon at another person and then respond in a cavalier way or crack one liners (as you might believe from watching other cop dramas). The normal reaction is actually shock, and a massive adrenaline dump. and it takes time to process and deal with it. And as for language, I agree that I would rather see this show on cable where the realistic language wouldn't have to be bleeped out. Real officers and real bad guys don't say 'shucks and darn'... But bravo for NBC for putting something like this together. Can't wait to see more!