As the sixth series of Line of Duty heats up, the good old police procedural drama is clearly back in fashion. If you need an additional fix before the next helping from AC-12, here are our favourite cops on television:
Jimmy McNulty, The Wire
As a rule of thumb, fictional cops tend to gravitate towards two moral archetypes: rule-breaking mavericks at one end and corrupt cynics at the other. But David Simon’s seminal work about the city of Baltimore blew that spectrum wide open, showing its various police teams as every bit as complex and compromised as the criminals they pursued. At the heart of it all is Jimmy McNulty: the obstinate and obsessive detective with overlapping talents for solid police work and relentless self-sabotage. A worthy lead man in a truly iconic series.
Rust Cohle, True Detective
Television cops don’t come much more disillusioned than Matthew McConaughey’s Rust Cohle, a man for whom the chance to re-investigate the unsolved murder of a prostitute from 17 years earlier at least provides a break from a private life besieged by family tragedies and recurrent drug addictions.
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