Southland: The Complete First Season (Uncensored) Review

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(More customer reviews)Excellent show, ... and although NBC dropped the ball by cancelling it, TNT has purchased all the shows and will start showing them on Tuesday nights at 10 p.m. starting Jan 12 (that's what it says on the TNT website! Yay! Starts in January ... and goody, we can also purchase the DVD here in January!

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From Emmy Award winners John Wells, Ann Biderman and Chris Chulack comes a raw and authentic look at the police unit in Los Angeles. From the beaches of Malibu to the streets of East LA, "Southland" is a fast-moving drama that will take you inside the lives of cops, criminals, victims and their families.
Michael Cudlitz ("A River Runs Through It") plays John Cooper a seasoned Los Angeles cop, assigned to train young rookie Ben Sherman (Benjamin McKenzie, "The O.C."). Cooper's honest, no-nonsense approach to the job leaves Sherman questioning whether or not he has what it takes to become a police officer. Cudlitz and McKenzie are joined by cast members Regina King ("Ray," "Jerry Maguire") who plays Detective Lydia Adams. Adams lives with and is the primary caregiver of her mother. Her partner, Detective Russell Clarke (Tom Everett Scott, "Boiler Room") is an unhappily married father of three. Michael McGrady ("The Thin Red Line") plays Detective Daniel "Sal" Salinger. Sal oversees fellow gang detectives Nate Moretta (Kevin Alejandro, "Drive," "Ugly Betty") and Sammy Bryant (Shawn Hatosy, "Alpha Dog"). Arija Bareikis ("Crossing Jordan") plays patrol officer Chickie Brown, a single mom who dreams of being the first woman accepted into SWAT.
WatchSouthland Tuesdays at 10/9c on TNT. New season begins March 2.

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The Rookies - The Complete First Season (1972) Review

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(More customer reviews)Aaron Spelling was in the beginning of his reign as ABC's personal hit-producer, having already contributed "The Mod Squad," when this show first aired in 1972. This show contributed to a era of cop shows that were as light and fluffy in content as they were heavy in pyrotechnic action.
"The Rookies" were a trio of newly-minted uniform patrolmen in a California police department. Terry Webster was a serious intellectual who had been a social protester, but decided he could make real change by patrolling the beat. Mike Danko was a serious minded ex military man married to a nurse, and Willie Gillis was a fun-loving college grad. Under the tutelage of their squad commander, Lt. Ryker, the three cops learned the ropes and how to take the bad guys off the streets.
Georg Stanford Brown played Webster with authority. Sam Melville, a veteran character actor, played Danko as a sober, but compassionate cop woh dearly loved his wife (played by Spelling's future Charlie's Angel Kate Jackson), and Michael Ontkean was the silly one, making jokes and always looking at things from a humorous perspective. (Ontkean would leave the series and be replaced by a different character played by Bruce Fairbairn in subsequent seasons). And Gerald S. O'Loughlin was marvelous as Lt. Ryker, a serious, almost unemotional superior who actually had a great sense of humor and was genuinely caring and concerned about his young charges.
This show wasn't going to set a high bar for plotting or originality, but it was well-written and well acted. It was entertaining and worth watching. And it continued to pave the way for Spelling's many other cop/detective dramas, including "SWAT," "Starsky and Hutch," "Vegas," "Hart to Hart," "Charlie's Angels," "TJ Hooker," and "Matt Houston." It's well worth remembering.


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The Rookies stars Sam Melville as Mike Danko, Michael Ontkean (Twin Peaks) as Willie Gillis, and Georg Stanford Brown (Roots) as Terry Webster.They portray three young and handsome new police officers learning to protect and serve the public under the watchful guidance of Gerald S. O'Loughlin as Lt. Ed Ryker. Also starring is Kate Jackson as Jill, a practicing nurse married to Mike Danko. The Rookies depict the personal and professional adjustments officers make as they embark on their careers and focus on the dramatic police cases they are assigned.

Notable guest stars the first season include Martin Sheen, Tyne Daly, Cheryl Ladd, Academy Award® winner Louis Gossett, Jr. (Best Supporting Actor, An Officer and a Gentleman), and Dick Van Patten (TV’s Eight Is Enough).

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TJ Hooker - The Complete 1st and 2nd Seasons (1982) Review

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(More customer reviews)To me this is one of the best cop shows I have ever seen. The star is William Shatner as Sergeant Thomas John Hooker (you only hear his name in one episode which guest stars Vic Tayback so watch for it, it should be in THIS set) a former detective who decided (before the series started) to turn in his gold shield and put his uniform back on to train some raw academy recruits. At the end of the 90 minute pilot, those who remain in the class get assigned veteran officers as partners and hit the streets. One of these rookies (ironically the best in the class) Vince Romano (Adrian Zmed) lucks out and gets partnered with Hooker, and thus begins our series. Throughout the 4 or 5 episodes of Season 1 and all of Season 2 (the first FULL season), stories revolve around Romano learning there is more to learn on the streets than what you learn in training, Hooker spending time with his family (ex wife Fran, a nurse, younguns Chrissy and Tommy and high school age Cathy, who works part time as a candy striper at the same hospital as her mom), Romano making goo goo eyes at the girl dispatcher (Vicki Taylor played by April Clough in the VERY SHORT first season or Stacy Sheridan (Heather Locklear) who happens to be the precinct Captain Dennis Sheridan (Richard Herd)'s daughter), Hooker training more rookies (with Romano as his aide), and more. After the contents of this set (perhaps the Season 2 finale), Stacy graduates and gets partnered with another veteran Jim Corrigan (played by James Darren). After a rocky start (ala the Adam 12 series premiere) Stacy and Jim become a partnership, and the remainder of the series (which will hit dvd soon I hope) they run tag team with Hooker and Romano. Although, James Darren appears on the cover of this set, he does not become a regular til Season 3 (that's why you don't see his name on the box), by then also Captain Sheridan becomes occasional. Watch in this set for an episode directed by Leonard Nimoy and another one co-starring Nimoy as a lieutenant friend of Hooker who goes off the beam when his daughter is raped. This was a fixture on the Saturday night ABC lineup from 1982 to 1985 when it mysteriously got cancelled. It then surfaced on CBS late night in mostly reruns, but a handful of new episodes (minus Adrian Zmed for reasons unknown) were produced. The show stayed on CBS late night for another year, but by then was pretty much all reruns (from the original ABC run and their (CBS)'s run as well). Hopefully Columbia will release all the other episodes soon (considering they've stalled on the second and final season of S.W.A.T. who knows). Truly one of my favorite series of all time.

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A street cop who gives a damn! The cop drama series T.J. HOOKER starred William Shatner as a police detective who turned his back on a gold badge and went back to patrolling the streets and training recruits. The long-running series also starred Adrian Zmed, James Darren, and launched the career of sexy Heather Locklear. Highlights include the show's original pilot and a special guest appearance by Leonard Nimoy!

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S.W.A.T. - The Complete First Season (1975) Review

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(More customer reviews)Ah, those unforgettable words...especially poignant since they were said to me by Steve Forrest (Hondo)a number of times. Yep, I played T.J. McCabe in the original series, the guy with the bolt action scope rifle who'd climb up on high places (technically the sniper was called the "high man"), yank my cap around and try to emulate Steve McQueen's smooth moves with guns. So it's a real gas to see the original 13 come out on DVD...especially because I never had good copies of the originals!
SWAT was a great experience, with a bunch of great guys. We were surprised when they cancelled the show...it had been doing great, #1 all summer...then ABC switched it to try to win another night...good old network TV wisdom...and we lost our audience.
The scuttlebutt around the 20th Fox lot was that Aaron Spelling hated the show...it wasn't what he felt his name should be associated with...you may remember he went on to do Family and Dallas after that...so he allegedly swapped us out for Starsky and Hutch, which was a more character-driven show. Can't say I blame him...the writing got pretty stale pretty quick, because at least one of the line producers would take good scripts and turn them around to focus on Hondo and also dumb 'em up in favor of action, whereas we kept hoping they'd give us more of a shot at a Rookies-style, character-strong program.
We did have a lot of fun in that short 35 episodes...and I was particularly happy to find out that Rod Perry (Deke), whom I believed, thanks to a story Mark Shera (Luca)told me in the mid-80s, had died of a heart attack way back then, is in fact still very much alive!
But still sad that my old pal Bob Urich (Jim Street in SWAT, Dan Tana in Vegas, Spencer in Spencer for Hire)is gone for real. He was a good and good hearted man.
The only bummer about the new movie is that at least a couple of the guys from the old show did brief cameos in the flick, but since I live in NY, and the casting agent told me there was no real effort to include all of us anyway as in a reunion scene, I got left out of the movie. That was a little disappointing, I would have loved to do a bit in it, especially since they reprised our original character names (and made my character into a bad guy!) Well, that's Hollywood for you.
Best news is I'm happy to hear our old fans are still out there and rooting for good over evil on the streets of L.A. Thanks for still digging the show, everybody!
your ever-lovin', crime-fightin' T.J.
James Coleman

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SWAT FIRST SEASON - DVD Movie

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