Cop TV - by Michael Arntfield (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Synonymous with the advent of television, the reality is that cop shows--for better or worse--represent the collective social history of America and beyond. They are imperfect but otherwise immutable cultural artifacts that will one day, as they already do now, impart for future generations the often grim day-to-day realities of (chiefly) urban life in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Cop shows are allegories about natural, procedural, and social justice, of course, but they are also exposés about the inevitability of violence, fate, redemption, family, sacrifice, addiction, and discrimination, as well as the social constructions of evil--the entire spectrum of the human condition.

Even amid one-time calls to entirely defund the police, the cop show never got cancelled. Not even close. In fact, it remains, as the statistics and anecdotes contained in this book elucidate, the leading and most indelible form of fictional home entertainment on record, regardless of broadcast platform or territory. Until now, however, no one has really ever bothered to ask why.

Nostalgic, campy, often violent and unsettling, and frequently politically incorrect, cop shows--having at various points been formative viewing by both future cops and criminals alike--also remain in many cases the general public's main, and often illusory, access point to forensic investigative procedure and greatly shape their perspectives of law enforcement and the criminal justice system writ large.

About the Author

Among one of the most cited experts at Western University (Canada) and a previous visiting Chair at Vanderbilt University in Nashville (2017) and future visiting scholar at The Citadel in South Carolina (2027), he currently appears as the host/featured expert/narrator in multiple true crime television and streaming series currently on air. Three of his existing true crime works are also in development as scripted series with US producers represented by CAA and other large agencies. His "life rights" (homicide detective-turned-cold case college professor) have also been optioned by multiple American television production companies, studios, and streamers and remain under option and in development.

Also a co-director and resident expert with the Murder Accountability Project homicide think tank and victim advocacy group in Washington, DC, Dr. Arntfield routinely consults for law enforcement agencies and has lectured everywhere from the FBI Academy in Quantico to the Western Australian Police Academy, often using cop shows as icebreakers and teaching points in these sessions.

There is no one currently better-suited, based on his real-world policing and television production/consultancy experience alike, as well as his academic subject matter expertise, to credibly write this book.