Recommendations: Week of 8/26/2024

There's more detecting to be done.

I know you have been eyeing that wide lapel wool trench in your closet. I see you over there, trying to decide if it’s finally the right time to switch to some sensible chunky shoes you could perhaps chase a subject down on foot in. It’s not just me feeling the 70 degree temps we’re hitting from like 10 PM-6AM (ok, this is an East Coast-centric blog). But like… don’t you want to just go out there and detect something? On the August 5 recommendations post, I posed this same question, but a detective’s work is never done. We are T-minus one week from full-on September over here. It’s time to get serious about all the crime-solving you put on hold so you could enjoy summer’s delights.

Homicide: Life on the Street (Peacock): Ok, so. As of a week ago, I had seen nothing of this show. I had a vague idea this was a network show that was like a more adult Law & Order. I think I sort of confused it with The Shield, which always had really intense commercials during other shows I did watch, like Charmed. But I wiped my associations slate clean recently and came to it fresh, because at long last this show is available on streaming. And oh boy. There are very few shows of such high caliber that have been unavailable on streaming for as long as this one; it arrives to us basically a time capsule of excellent 90s genre television. It is incredible; on par with the show it is often associated with, David Simon’s The Wire. Homicide was Simon’s first foray into television. He wrote the non-fiction book the show was based on and remained a producer and consultant on it throughout its run. The show follows a squad of homicide detectives with the Baltimore Police Department, portraying them with a verisimilitude I’ve rarely seen on any show of any era. The dialogue can feel simultaneously Shakespearean and like you’re overhearing the bitching from an office bullpen (people are just always talking in a way that is so naturalistic). As in The Wire, Baltimore is an important character; Simon and his collaborators are so good at making you feel situated within the city, of understanding how the specificity of Baltimore and its culture, its physical layout, its widespread failures, shapes these crimes. This is truly a lost treasure, and now it’s just there on Peacock, waiting for you to experience it.

Watch if you like Law & Order but without the breathless excitement over perverse crimes that show has too much of (too many episodes about Santeria, guys!), The Wire, and We Own This City.

Dark Winds (AMC via Netflix): It is a truth universally acknowledged among TV critics that a show’s best chance of success is to be picked up by Netflix. And lo AMC has given Netflix the rights to a ton of their shows recently, including the two seasons of Dark Winds, a strange and appealing cop thriller starring Zahn McClarnon as a veteran tribal police lieutenant in Navajo County, Arizona. The feds are circling because a chopper carrying a bank-full of money has disappeared into the nearby reservation and there are several mysterious murders to investigate that may all be connected. All our main characters are Navajo and the action takes place primarily on the Navajo Nation Reservation in the 1970s. Detective shows are a dime a dozen; what’s interesting about this one is the setting and background. Since the show went to Netflix, suddenly there’s a lot more internet attention, and I hope that leads even more people to the show. It’s worth your time and attention and it will transport you to a place and introduce you to a community that isn’t depicted that often on television.

Watch if you like unique detective dramas, buddy-cop dramas, 1970s cars and/or fashion, Mormon jokes.