“The Shield: Outside the Law” – A Hidden Gem in the World of Police Series

‘The Wire’, ‘Los Soprano’ y ‘Breaking Bad’, the Holy Trinity. The three series that one always cites on the run when asked about the best series in history, those that make a difference, those whose characters -Omar Little, Tony Soprano, Walter White- are part of Olympus.

However, there is a series with a similar theme to the one starring Dominic West, Idris Elba and Michael K. Williams that can look this “untouchable” policewoman in the face without feeling any blush and that, thanks to that “in crescendo” from the end of its second season, it surpasses in quality in some of its sections.

Amazon Prime

‘The Shield: Outside the Law’ is an original series of FX Network created by Shawn Ryan, released in 2002 and that you can recover in Amazon Prime Video. If we had to describe the tone of what is one of the best police series that will hook you, we would bet on a “dirty” style, a grainy image filmed with a shoulder-mounted camera to show the reality of the streets and that accompanies those who kick the streets and break down the doors of suspects of any type of crime.

Throughout its seven seasons, we can learn about the operation of a police station called “The Barn”, located in the fictitious district of Farmington (Los Angeles), and witness the day-to-day life of the police officers and teams from the different units. So far, normal. But it is already known that one rotten apple could spoil the rest of the apples in the same basket…

The path of justice is crooked

In ‘The Shield’ Not everything is black or white, it’s a series of grises. With the fingers of one hand we will be able to meet honest police officers with impeccable morals, such as Claudette Wyms (CCH Pounder) and Detective Terry Crowley (Reed Diamond) who, involuntarily, will be in charge of shaping a plot that will unfold throughout its 88 episodes.

The shield

FX Network carried out a decoy promotional campaign innovative for the time: placing Reed Diamond’s Terry Crowley as the main protagonist. His mission, and the supposed plot of the series, would be to unmask the illegal practices of the members of a special unit within the police station known as “The Assault Team”, that is, the men of action, those who do not wear any type of uniform and deal every day with the garbage that is rampant in the streets.

An event against all odds puts an end to this plot and places this Assault Team made up of Vick Mackey (Michael Chiklis), Shane Vendrel (Walton Goggins), Ronnie Gardocki (David Rees Snelly) y Curtis “Lem” Lemansky (David Rees Snell), who will always be seen with the noose around their necks and whose corpses in the closet will accumulate at an alarming rate.

Al Capone with a plaque

Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis), the leader of this gang, is defined by the Police Captain himself as “Al Capone with a badge” and is a character that we have rarely been able to see on television because he, under oath, is called upon to defend the innocent, but the reality is quite different.

FX

Smart, cold and calculating, Mackey is capable of jumping headlong into a fountain to save the life of a baby, but he does not hesitate for a second to use such unorthodox methods as extortion, blackmail, torture and, also, murder. Along with him, Shane Vendrell stands out above all, his right-hand man and whose lack of intelligence he makes up for with an even greater lack of ethics and morality.

The series picks up pace from its second season and never stops rising, thanks also to the incorporation of characters like Monica Rawling (Glenn Close) and Jon Kavanaugh (Forest Whitaker), who will tighten even more strongly a rope destined to break in the worst possible way throughout a series that shows a spiral of violence, dirt and corruption from which very few will remain safe.

Jorge is an expert in movies, series and comics. His favorite genres are horror and science fiction, the perfect balance between the thunderous scream of the slasher and the disturbing silence of space and, although he flirts with auteur cinema in search of that hidden gem away from the mainstream, he does not hide, his thing is commercial cinema at the hands of Marvel, Star Wars, DC and Pixar.

This restless journalist discovered the mysticism of ‘Twin Peaks’ a few years ago and, since then, it’s just another concept trapped inside David Lynch’s head. When he manages to escape from the Black Lodge, he revisits the filmography of the master Carpenter, gets lost again in the pages of Moore and Gibbons’ ‘Watchmen’ or launches in search of new emotions in miniseries format.

After his fleeting stint in media such as TVE, RNE and the TV and communication section of La Razón, Jorge has spent more than a decade in the delirious world of advertising agencies, where he has had the opportunity to be part of various communication teams that have allowed him to participate in soirees, events, junkets and various efforts with performers of the stature of Antonio de la Torre, Jared Harris, Kim Dickens, Colman Domingo and Christina Hendricks. He arrived at PHOTOGRAMS in 2022, where he managed to find a place as an editor to write about the most popular series, the best Alfred Hitchcock movies or everything related to franchises, reboots, prequels, sequels, sequels and various nonsense of the moment, thus resuming his passion for journalism and cinema.

Jorge has a degree in journalism from the Complutense University of Madrid, as well as being a filmmaker from the RTVE Institute, where he acquired notions of pre-production, production and post-production of audiovisuals.

2023-07-23 17:39:15
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