Watching the detectives: TV’s 10 most memorable cops

As soon as we had television, we had shows about the police. Crime and punishment, the weekly procedural, has been a small-screen staple. But over the past 70 years, the officers who serve as the protagonists on cop shows have changed, whether to match the times or reset them.

Through the quality of the show and the strength of the actor’s performance, the most memorable police officers on television rise above their individual eras. Consider this list of 10 unforgettable men and women behind the badge, presented in alphabetical order, as the pillars of the police drama. Whatever the charges, these officers made them stick.

Mariska Hargitay (with Wallace Shawn) in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: 25 years of accumulated trauma.Credit: Virginia Sherwood/NBC)

Olivia Benson
Mariska Hargitay in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit

What a feat of endurance. For 550 episodes and counting, Mariska Hargitay’s New York Police department detective has been a tower of empathy and commitment while investigating sexually based crimes. As a 43-minute procedural, SVU has its limits, but the character of Olivia Benson transcends them, as 25 years of backstory and accumulated trauma serve to accentuate her dedication and resilience. Multiple generations have watched the character weekly, but even as Benson has become a television icon her humanity, however frayed, has remained at the forefront of Hargitay’s performance.
Streaming: Amazon Prime (seasons 1-23), Binge (seasons 11-23), 7plus (seasons 7-14)

Sarah Lancashire as Catherine Cawood in Happy Valley: poignant and brutal.Credit: Matt Squire

Catherine Cawood
Sarah Lancashire in Happy Valley

A police officer’s struggle between public responsibility and private need has never been better depicted than in the character of Catherine Cawood, a West Yorkshire police sergeant whose commitment to her job and community is tested when the man who raped her daughter and fathered her grandson is released from jail. Happy Valley can be grim viewing, with corrosive bursts of violence, but Cawood is a transcendent character whose complexities are revealed over three outstanding seasons. The show is both poignant and brutal, full of human fraility and slowly unwound conspiracies, and Lancashire’s performance reveals how someone can live through it all.
Streaming: BritBox (seasons 1-2), Stan (seasons 1-2), ABC iview (season 3)

Matthew McConaughey as Rustin Cohle and Woody Harrelson as Martin Hart in True Detective: anti-hero.

Rustin Cohle
Matthew McConaughey in True Detective (season one)

Would you like some nihilism with your policing? Framed by the increasingly rattled responses of his partner, Woody Harrelson’s Marty Hart, Matthew McConaughey’s Louisiana State Police Detective is a solemn truth-seeker who has surrendered to his cold-hearted pessimism. “I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep,” is a long way from Kojak’s “who loves ya, baby”, but in the midst of a horror-tinged crime epic and the lofty ambitions of creator Nic Pizzolatto, Cohle’s existential monologues are the just-right calling card for this anthology’s debut season. This is the anti-hero detective taken to the limit, and the role resonates.
Streaming: Binge

“Just one more thing”: Peter Falk as Columbo.Credit: Brendan Read

Frank Columbo
Peter Falk in Columbo

Rumpled, discursive and deceptively eccentric, Columbo was just the protagonist for a 1970s update of the murder mystery. With the perpetrator revealed in the preamble – a howcatchem, as opposed to a whodunit – you could watch Columbo sort through the evidence, eye off the suspects and corner his quarry. Working for the Los Angeles Police Department, Columbo was a blue-collar public servant often outwitting the high and mighty – “just one more thing,” he would say, before unearthing an incriminating detail. Falk inhabited the role, emphasising brains over brawn – Columbo rarely bothered to carry a gun.
Streaming: Amazon Prime

Michael Chiklis as Vic Mackey in The Shield: rotten.Credit: AP

Vic Mackey
Michael Chiklis in The Shield

The dirty cop had long been part of police dramas, usually depicted as a lone rotten apple who gets their comeuppance, but Shawn Ryan’s propulsive crime drama changed the rules in 2002 by making corrupt task force leader Vic Mackey the centre, both narratively and emotionally, of the show. Mackey and his crew treat their Los Angeles district like an occupying army, extorting tribute from criminals and dispensing vigilante justice. That Mackey’s a loving family man capable of executing colleagues he’s soured on is an accommodation The Shield embraces and Michael Chiklis embodies. He reveals the entire orchard is rotten.
Streaming: Currently not available

Andre Braugher as Det. Frank Pembleton in Homicide: Life on the Street: frightening intensity.Credit: NBCUniversal via Getty Images

Frank Pembleton
Andre Braugher in Homicide: Life on the Street

If this was a list of the funniest television cops, the late, great Andre Braugher would be on it for the deadpan delights of Captain Raymond Holt in Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Three decades ago, Braugher raised the bar for police dramas with his stunning portrayal of Frank Pembleton, a brilliant Baltimore homicide detective who pursued his job with frightening intensity and a bruised sense of faith. Magnetic among a gifted ensemble cast, with a voice that mesmerised suspects and the audience alike, Braugher made Pembleton unlike any detective television had seen in 1993. It’s the same today.
Streaming: Currently not available

John Thaw and Dennis Waterman as detectives Regan and Carter in The Sweeney: Regan was a good guy who resembled the bad guys.

Jack Regan
John Thaw in The Sweeney

Police series were about the good guys catching the bad guys, at least until 1975 when this British crime drama crashed onto the screen and audiences were captivated by John Thaw’s street-savvy detective inspector. Hungover, armed and quick to break the rules to close a case, Jack Regan of the Flying Squad (rhyming slang: Sweeney Todd) was a good guy who resembled the bad guys a little too much. With Dennis Waterman as his offsider, George Carter, the working-class Regan would refuse bribes but frame a suspect if they didn’t cooperate. He’s patient zero for every flawed copper since then.
Streaming: Currently not available

Dennis Franz as Andy Sipowicz in the series’ final episode of NYPD Blue: Sipowicz wrestled with his failings.Credit: AP Photo/ABC,Danny Feld

Andy Sipowicz
Dennis Franz in NYPD Blue

Short-sleeve shirts, even shorter temper. When NYPD Blue debuted in 1993 it was intended as a showcase for David Caruso’s coolly charismatic Manhattan police detective, John Kelly. The balding, barking Andy Sipowicz was his loyal partner and NYPD traditionalist – that is, often drunk, occasionally racist. But Caruso soon quit the show for the movies, and creators Steven Bochco and David Milch realised what they had with Dennis Franz as Sipowicz. The program thrived as Sipowicz wrestled with his failings, and although the writers couldn’t resist torturing Sipowicz with grieving loss, he was the heart and soul of a groundbreaking drama.
Streaming: Disney+

Aaron Pedersen as Jay Swan in Mystery Road: pain and perseverance intertwined.

Jay Swan
Aaron Pedersen and Mark Coles Smith in Mystery Road

A character so compelling that two actors have been able to illustrate him – Aaron Pedersen for two seasons of the ABC’s outback crime mystery, then Mark Coles Smith in the prequel Origin – Jay Swan is an Aboriginal police detective who resides in seemingly untenable spaces. Often shunned by his community and his colleagues alike, Swan is trying to solve contemporary crimes on land where historic wrongs have never been atoned for. Pain and perseverance are intertwined in Pedersen’s defining performance, which is shot through with stoic restraint.
Streaming: ABC iview, AMC+ (season 1) Stan (season 2)

Helen Mirren as DCI Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect: gripping.

Jane Tennison
Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect

The efforts of female police officers to break through in an aggressively male environment had informed shows since the early 1980s (shout out to Cagney & Lacey), but the 1991 arrival of Lynda La Plante’s gripping procedural put them into vividly sharp focus. The first female detective chief inspector in London’s Metropolitan Police, Jane Tennison has to fight to lead her team, let alone solve a case. Mirren’s nuanced performance takes in every facet of the character. There’s ambition, and wilful drive, but also blind spots and an understanding of her femininity. Seven mini-series over 15 years made for a long-form epic.
Streaming: BritBox

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