If You Love ‘Blue Bloods’ You Might Like These Cop Shows Too
CBS has a good track record lately of many of their legal and cop shows running longer than some of their iconic shows of the past. Crime dramas like NCIS and the reboot of Hawaii-Five-O are already running longer than anybody expected. One of those is also Blue Bloods, now winding up its ninth season with a possible tenth.
While some rumors are swirling about them winding up soon, what similar cop shows out there could fill the void? Keep in mind, not all cop shows have to be set in the real world, or even be on network television to be considered comparatively good.
Here’s our short list of some other cop shows in the Blue Bloods vein.
‘Chicago P.D.’
NBC’s Chicago franchise from Dick Wolf is about as long-running and ubiquitous as his Law & Order shows were. The reasons are clear: Wolf brings gritty realism while also crafting stories from recent headlines.
Chicago P.D. is another good example, even if some might get confused trying to remember all the Chicago franchise names. This one is very similar to Blue Bloods thanks to another insightful deep-dive into the inner workings of the police department in the Windy City.
Jason Beghe, Jon Seda, and Sophia Bush are just three of the top-billed names in the cast. They’re all excellent as the show follows the complex entanglements going on inside Chicago’s police department. It usually involves dark and brooding scenes, much like Blue Bloods. Plus, it follows the hardships the Chief of the P.D. goes through, just like you see with Tom Selleck’s Commissioner Frank Reagan.
Now in its sixth season, don’t be surprised to see Chicago P.D. run as long as Blue Bloods has, if not longer.
‘Criminal Minds’
Did you know one of the longest running drama shows on CBS is also Criminal Minds? It started back in 2005 and has some similarities to Blue Bloods, as in solving complicated big city crimes.
The similarities differ a little since CM details the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI. Where it’s the same is in how both shows combine crime cases with the personal issues law enforcement officials go through.
Produced and created by Jeff Davis, the cast has been highly underappreciated considering it has Joe Mantegna, Thomas Gibson, and Lola Glaudini as just a few top names. You may remember Mandy Patinkin as the lead of the show for its first three years before leaving to become an even bigger superstar on Homeland.
If Criminal Minds keeps going, it could end up joining CBS’s pantheon of longest-running shows.
‘Gotham’
One thing we’ve learned about Fox’s Gotham is that you can have a compelling cop show without being ensconced in reality. Taking place in the DC Universe, Gotham has a parallel to Blue Bloods because it tells the back story of James Gordon before he became Commissioner of the Gotham City Police Department.
It makes us ponder if Blue Bloods would ever produce a similar prequel showing a younger version of Commissioner Reagan.
While all the baddies here are from the DC Comics (including the celebrated Robin Lord Taylor as Oswald Cobblepot/The Penguin), there’s still a lot of connecting strings to real-life crime headlines. It’s worth a watch if you’ve never watched, and it’s available on Netflix.
This year will be their final season, so you can probably binge-watch after it officially ends.
‘The Chicago Code’
This promising show only lasted a few months on Fox back in 2011. Fortunately, you can catch it on Netflix and Amazon Prime. The Chicago Code is worth the watch because it showed us a woman police superintendent in Chicago.
Basically, it’s a gender role reversal of Selleck’s Reagan. Jennifer Beals played Teresa Colvin to acclaim, despite the show being canceled way too early. Also look out for other memorable cast members like Jason Clarke, Delroy Lindo, and Matt Lauria.
Many still say this show had a lot of possibilities, yet didn’t get the audience it deserved.
With so many cop shows like Blue Bloods, it’s becoming rarer to find similar shows having a good chance to run more than ten seasons.
