Serving two masters

I’m looking after the review column this week while Nick’s away, so things will be a little different (that is, rubbish.)

I was going to write something about The Daily Show, now available Monday to Thursday on UK television thanks to Channel 4’s new spinoff channel More 4. Finally a reason to own a Freeview box. However, there seems little to add to this interview with the show’s Anchor, Jon Stewart, other than to say that you can download some taster clips from the Comedy Central website and the second half of each show, once the satire is out of the way, are usually interviews with an actor/writer/politician shilling their latest movie/book/self and can largely be avoided.

Anyway, a retrospective in instead. On Saturday, the fourth season of The Shield reached the end of its run on Five. I haven’t watched a police procedural show since Hill Street Blues and superficially that’s what The Shield is. For about the first five minutes of Episode One, Season One.

Set in a rundown precinct in a fictional poor area of Los Angeles, the show’s rap sheet is the usual litany of gangbanging (that’s running with gangs, not going to one of Kate Moss’ parties), drug dealing, shootings, rapings and so on. So far, so yawn.

But. The twist in this show is, to paraphrase Noel Coward in the Italian Job: “Camp Freddy, everyone in the precinct is bent.”

The show is completely berzerk, from its latino-metal theme tune to its WTF!? crime scenes. It’s also completely brilliant and just the thing for anybody needing a break from bada-bing or liberal wet dreams.

At the centre of the web is the satanic, bullet-headed, thick-necked Vic Mackey, chief of the precinct’s Strike Team, the four detectives who go in first, kicking doors and heads in equal measure. Slowly, all the characters are drawn into his world, doing deals with him and making compromises both large and small. Not least of these being Aceveda, the precinct’s latino captain and his lusting ambition for public office.

To Mackey and his three hilariously dumb-as-posts team members, rules are not there to be broken: rules are not there. Suspects are beaten, cameras in interview rooms are unplugged, and tame drug dealers are kept on short leads to fund the team’s retirements and provide information. And by the end of episode one, we’re under no illusions that nobody is going to stand is Mackey’s way.

Many of the cop show archetypes are on the roster: The bent cop(s), ambitious precinct captain, female street cop with doubts, rookie street cop with a secret, vain detective using psychology to crack his cases. All however, are drawn in the now obligatory satisfactory shades of grey.

Mackey cheats on his wife, but would do anything to protect her. He has a paternal relationship with a crack-addicted prostitute. His complicity with drug dealers is part of his wider mission of keeping the streets safe for ordinary citizens.

Julien, the rookie, is tormented by his secret, which drives him into the waiting jaws of Mackey and (almost) death. Wagenbach, the amateur psychologist, has psychological failings of his own leaving him at the mercy of the intelligent predators it is his job to catch. Danielle, the patrol officer with doubts, knows what Vic is but that doesn’t stop her climbing into his bed.

Only one character, black female detective Claudette Wyms, seems underwritten. It’s testament to the actor playing her – CCH Pounder – that we gain our connection with the precinct’s voice of conscience. Her imperious, flared-nosed double takes at Mackey and all’s antics are worth the admission on their own. Even so, she’s not above using Mackey when needs must (the Devil, after all, is driving).

One review of the show described it like Tony Soprano becoming a cop. Like Tony, Vic is a monster. But he’s human as well and, like the Jersey gangster, it’s easy to be drawn into his orbit. Even this liberal, anti-Guantanamo pinko’s heart beat faster as Vic extracted a confession from a paedophile holding an eleven year-old girl hostage in a way only Vic could. When Vic is rampant, chest heaving, the wide-eyed wild bull stare in his eyes, he is capable of anything. And then he goes home and hugs his kids.

There the similarity ends. Vic would have Tony for breakfast and toss the scraps to his buddies.

(The Shield seasons one and two are available from sendit.com for thirteen quid each. Which is more murder and mayhem than such a paltry sum usually buys you. I hope.)