Canuck Producers Love Cop Shows (Coppers, etc).
And Americans Love Watching Them. Call It "The Flashpoint Effect".
Apr 25, 2009
IGN is reporting that ABC has picked up a thirteen episode order of a television show called Coppers, which is produced by the Canadian company E1 Entertainment. Not only is this the latest in a string of Canadian shows getting picked up down south, but it’s also another cop show. If one takes a look back at Canadian TV success stories they’ll find that police, or something similar, are a common feature.
Canadian TV Success Stories (Flashpoint, The Listener, The Guard) are about Crime-Fighters
Disregarding The Trailer Park Boys, Degrassi, and other notable exceptions; unless the show is animated or reality, there’s a good chance it will need to be police-related to succeed. The first such international TV success Canada had was Due South, a show about a Mountie (because self-parody also sells well) living in the U.S. Back home our major successes that didn’t involve Anne of Green Gables or ice-related activities were cop shows such as DaVinci’s Inquest, and more recently The Border. The ratings-challenged but critically claimed Intelligence was also about law enforcement, in its case CSIS. Canadian expat David Shore, who produced many episodes of Due South, also wrote for NYPD Blue and later created House, a medical drama… based on a detective (Sherlock Holmes).
Most television shows that Canada has sold to the U.S. have followed the “must have police” trend. Remember the awful Sue Thomas: F.B.Eye? Although you wouldn’t know it, the show was completely Canadian, but focused on the FBI so that Americans wouldn’t realize it. One of the show’s stars, Yannick Bisson (the current CIBC spokesperson), later ended up in a Canadian period-police drama which airs in Canada and the UK. After the U.S. writer’s strike CBS again turned to a Canadian show, picking up Flashpoint, a show about police, but with an emotional twist. Clearly trying to answer the success of CBC’s The Border and CTV’s Flashpoint, Global then developed The Guard, a show about the Canadian Coast Guard… but with an emotional twist. A small American network just bought broadcasting rights for the show.
The Bridge and Coppers are More of the Same, but is 18-Life a Sign Things Could Change?
Coming up this fall on CBS is yet another Canadian police-drama, The Bridge, which is about a Toronto police officer who is also the police union boss. You can bet it has some emotional twists ahead. It’s not all police though, already an international hit and set to air on NBC starting June 4 (TBA in Canada), The Listener is a complete break in the pattern; the story revolves around a psychic paramedic…. who uses his abilities to solve crime.
There could be changes to the status-quo coming soon; ABC co-produced a pilot with CBC called 18 to Life, which is a single camera sitcom, no cops at all. CBC has already picked up the show, but so far nothing has been heard from ABC. They’ll likely announce their intentions during their May 18th upfronts (where American networks announce their fall schedules.) Since the show is not about the police but about young newlyweds, I’m thinking it probably won’t get the nod; at the same time, its creator was a producer for two different police-dramas, so it has that going for it.
Coppers is being billed by ABC as "a youthful, heartfelt, one-hour, character-driven workplace drama about five rookie cops plunged into the high stakes world of big city policing – a world where even the smallest mistake can have life-or-death consequences. The series follows this group of new cops just out of the police academy, where they bonded together, fought together, drank together, worked together and slept together. And now they're on the job together. They're kids with guns, learning firsthand the hardest kind of policing there is. They're first responders, and they're about to learn that no amount of training prepares you for life." Why does ABC want it? According to the press, the show has been billed as “Grey’s Anatomy, but with cops.” So basically it’s a cop show, but with an emotional twist.
