CASE CLOSED ON DRAMA

From CSI to S.W.A.T, Siobhan Duck investigates why audiences find police procedurals so arresting

CSI. SVU. FBI. M.I.T. NYPD Blue... S.W.A.T. is part of a long history of arresting police dramas on TV – and that’s just the ones that use acronyms in their titles. A spin-off of popular drama The Shield – and based on the 1975 Aaron Spelling show starring the late Robert Urich – S.W.A.T. follows an elite branch of police trained to tackle armed criminals.

Australian actor Alex Russell, who has played officer Jim Street on the hit Foxtel series from the beginning, believes there’s good reason for the enduring success of police dramas.

“It’s the same with murder mysteries. What it boils down to with cop shows is, at its most basic level, people want good to triumph over evil,” Russell says.

“You want to see that perpetrator brought to justice. People also just love trying to figure out the mystery of a whodunnit. And the other side of all that is that people love action. I mean, the show is called ‘Special Weapons And Tactics’. Some of our episodes remind me of Batman movies because the gear is so specific and elaborate.”

Of course, the thin blue line between the good guys and the baddies has become more blurred in today’s cop shows, with detectives no longer stereotypical knights in shining armour but rather human beings battling their own demons. That was certainly the case with Kate Winslet’s character in Mare Of Easttown, in which she played a homicide detective who was also a single mother struggling to hold her life together. Or the wellintentioned but potentially bent copper Ted Hastings, aka “The Gaffer”, played by Adrian Dunbar in Line Of Duty. And let’s not forget Vigil’s Amy Silva (Suranne Jones), a detective struggling with mental-health issues after a traumatising accident.

The characters in S.W.A.T. are also flawed heroes, Russell says, which only makes them more relatable to the audience.

And while there is certainly no shortage of police dramas on the small screen these days, the show carves out a very particular niche in its category, in addition to its impressive action sequences.

“It’s fun exploring all the different cultures and flavours of the city, and it just gives a really great exploration to

Los Angeles,” he says.

Russell acknowledges that race tensions in the US have also affected the characters and storylines.

“It’s awesome to have Shemar Moore [who plays sergeant Daniel ‘Hondo’ Harrelson] as our lead,” he says.

“To have a black man as the head of the S.W.A.T. team positions us to explore everything that came after George Floyd [who was murdered by a police officer in 2020, prompting social change across the US] and everything else that we’ve seen in America around the blackversus-blue mentality and the racism within the system.

“It’s pretty cool that we have a [program] that’s a really fun action show that is very accessible and commercially viable, but that can still explore important topics meaningfully.”

S.W. A.T.

8PM, SUNDAY, FOXTEL