Andrew Klavan RANKS A List of the Greatest Crime Shows Ever
Andrew Klavan ranks crime shows, awarding S ratings to Mindhunter, Law & Order (early seasons), The Sopranos, and S.H.I.E.L.D. while criticizing The Wire for its alleged leftist bias and Mayor of Lake Place for "wokeness." He praises Breaking Bad despite its finale flaws, gives an A to Columbo and Dragnet, and notes Law & Order's decline after season nine due to political shifts. Klavan also highlights cancelled gems like Harry O and concludes with a sponsored segment for Policy Genius, linking cultural commentary to practical life insurance solutions. [Automatically generated summary]
All right, today we are going to rank crime TV shows.
Crime is probably my favorite genre.
I didn't make this list.
I'm just going to look at this list and say whether these are top-notch.
What is the ranking S and then ABCD?
And I don't know the letters after that, so we'll have to guess if they get that bad.
I will bet that my favorite crime shows are not on this list.
All right, so the first one, Breaking Bad, 2008 to 2013, created by Vince Gilligan, starring Brian Cresnon.
A very fine show.
I thought it fell apart at the end.
I thought the last, not the whole end, but the last episode was bad.
And I thought that they got carried away by the story.
But that's not fair because it's just a criticism.
I still thought it was a terrific show.
And it was really a show about manhood, as almost every TV series from that time was.
And I thought it was top-notch.
So we'll give it, I'm going to give it an A instead of an S just to keep things really tight, right, so that we won't have great inflation here.
Let's go to Blue Bloods, starring Tom Selleck.
Blue Bloods is one of those good bad shows.
It's a bad show.
It's sentimental.
It's very direct, very propagandistic, but it does have a family praying at dinner.
Forgive us our daily bread, and blessed is the fruit of those who trespass against us.
It does have conservative ideas that sometimes flash in there, as with all TV shows.
It's slowly, slowly losing its conservative mojo.
But I think the fact that Tom Selleck is in it has kept it honest over a longer period of time than most.
So we're going to give Blue Bloods, I don't know, a B, I guess, for conservatism, but not for actual quality.
Columbo, starring Peter Falk, a really, really good entertainment.
That's an A show.
It's a really entertaining show.
I just watched it about, I don't know, three months ago.
I was just watching it again.
Just humorous, funny, well set up.
Cot, cot!
What is this?
Who is that?
Really entertaining.
The Rockford Files, starring James Garner.
This is by Stephen Connell.
I became friends with Stephen shortly before he died.
He was a wonderful, wonderful guy and really talented.
And the Rockford Files, I think, was his crowning achievement.
He kind of dominated the A team.
He dominated television in that time.
An A show because of James Garner.
He was just the perfect detective and played Philip Marlowe, in fact, in The Little Sister.
Miami Vice, starring Don Johnson and produced by Michael Mann, of course, who did the great movie Heat.
I thought that was a good show.
I'll give it a B plus.
I think that was a really interesting show.
Poirot with David Ducher.
I'm not a, you know, I'm not a big Pro Row fan, so I'm not the one to judge this.
I thought that was a good Poirot as Poirots go, so to speak.
So we'll give it a B. Mindhunter, excellent show produced by David Fincher.
The Rockford Files Dominance00:02:54
I did not know that until this very moment.
It's an executive produced by David Fincher.
Mindhunter is an excellent show.
My cousin wrote the book on which it is based, Mark Allshaker.
And I'm related to all good writers, but that was a very entertaining show.
I think I'm going to give that an S.
It was a really disturbing show, but very good.
Hawaii 5-0, starring Jack Lorde.
Ah, it was all right.
It was just an ordinary show.
I'm giving it a C, not because it was bad, but it was just ordinary.
Dragnet, created by and starring Jack Webb.
Boy, if you've never seen Dragnet, that's a really entertaining show.
You don't think very much of me, do you?
Let me put it this way.
You'll never make Mother of the Year, lady.
I'm giving that an A, too.
It's classic.
It's corny, but it is iconic.
There was never a show like it before or since.
CSI Crime Scene Investigation, also a sort of B show.
It's fine.
I don't think it's great or anything like that.
Law and Order by Dick Wolf and Rick Ide, it is the first, let's say, three to four seasons are spectacular.
That is the S show.
After that, it's the next five seasons till about season nine.
It is an A show.
And then after that, it's a B and a C show because the leftists took it over.
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Clarity On Coverage00:03:19
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The Sopranos.
I was just waiting for the Sopranos to give an S.
The Sopranos is one of the greatest television shows or anything ever made in America.
It is a great, starring James Gandalfini.
It is a great show.
It is a Shakespearean show.
Every episode is terrific, and I just think it is really excellent.
Look at that.
Looks like an ad for a f ⁇ ing Weight Loss Center.
Before and way before.
Rizzoli and Isles, I've only seen that once.
It's got Angie Harmon, who is absolutely gorgeous.
And as an entertainment, you know, top-notch, let's give it a B. Mayor of East Town, starring Kate Winslet.
I did watch that, and I thought that that was a B plus.
It was great for its acting.
The plot was kind of ridiculous.
And the wokeness really got in the way.
The Wire, first three episodes, S, one of the great shows ever.
It tails off in the end, and then they had some kind of this David Simon.
It also had some dumb stuff.
David Simon is a leftist.
It takes place in Baltimore.
There hasn't been a Republican in Baltimore since 1812.
And they kept blaming Republicans in it.
And they had all these ideas of things that would really fix things, that would never fix things.
And that got really preachy and dumb after the first two or three episodes, two or three seasons.
But the first season, certainly, and I think maybe the second and third S show is just fantastic for its realistic view of the streets and the policing.
The S.H.I.E.L.D., also an S show.
And just a classic piece of crime writing about dishonest cops who are great cops.
It started Michael Chiklis, and Walton Goggins had his great role in the last season.
It's distinguished by the fact that the last season is spectacular.
And Walton Goggins in the last season delivers one of the greatest performances I've ever seen in a television show.
True Detective Season 1 with Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson.
I was not as enamored of this as everybody else was.
I loved the dialogue, but I thought the plot sucked.
So I'll give it an A.
And the acting, I love the acting, and it had one of the greatest nude scenes I've ever seen.
It changed my life entirely.
All right, all right, all right.
But it had moments that were S, but it was certainly an A show.
The Sinner starring Bill Pullman, really creative, really interesting show where they show you what happened, and then you have to find out why it's not what you think happened.
And I think it's a really entertaining show.
I give that an A as well.
I've enjoyed the first one was great.
The second one was good.
The third one was not that good.
But it is entertaining, and the performance is terrific.
That's an interesting list, but you didn't hit the ones that I thought you weren't going to hit.
Two shows, which you should find, Harry O. and The Outsider, starring Darren McGavin.
They are tough guy detective stories.
Both of them bombed.
Both of them went off the air really quickly.
And both of them were really good because of the performance of the main guy.
The Outsider probably dates a little bit.
I haven't seen that in a while.
Harry O., both of them, just top private eyes shows that I really loved and didn't last.
All right, that's my listing.
But I thought those were, that was a good list, a really entertaining list.