Just as it has been in the last few years, during the peak streaming era, it was possible for great shows to slip through the cracks during the “Golden Age of Television” as well. This is exactly what happened to the crime drama series Southland, which premiered in 2009 and ran for five seasons through 2013. Unfortunately, the show’s run coincided with those of Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and The Walking Dead, and it concluded in the same year that Netflix launched its first original series, House of Cards. Southland combined a gritty documentary aesthetic with the character-first approach of Los Angeles-based film noir from the 1940s; it was shot on location, and featured a roster of talented actors as both cops and detectives. The show remains highly underrated, but will soon get a shot at redemption when it lands on Netflix on January 16.
It did for police dramas what The Pitt has been doing for medical shows; coincidentally, one of its principal cast members was Shawn Hatosy, who won an Emmy for his guest performance in The Pitt. Created by Ann Biderman, who’d go on to create Ray Donovan for Showtime, Southland featured Michael Cudlitz, Ben McKenzie, Regina King, and others, alongside Hatosy. The show’s first season ran on NBC, but was canceled just weeks before its scheduled return. The remaining four seasons aired on TNT. Southland always struggled with ratings, but it delivered solid reviews for the entirety of its five-year run. It holds an overall 90% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, with the first season debuting at a “certified fresh” 77% score, and the final two seasons earning perfect 100% scores on RT.
‘Southland’ Earned the Prestigious Peabody Award
The critic Matt Zoller Seitz declared Southland to be “the most engrossing cop series” since the first season of NBC’s Homicide: Life on the Street. In 2012, the show won the prestigious Peabody Award. Southland should appeal to anybody who loves The Wire or Training Day, and even the older audiences who tune in to shows such as Reacher and The Terminal List. That said, the show’s overall tone could be viewed as slightly copaganda-adjacent in the current climate; justifiably so, seeing as it spotlights law enforcement and is set in a largely realistic world. However, there’s only one way to find out for sure, and that’s to check Southland out when it debuts on Netflix on January 16.
Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
Release Date
2009 – 2013-00-00
Directors
Christopher Chulack, Nelson McCormick, Félix Enríquez Alcalá, Allison Anders
Writers
Ann Biderman, Dee Johnson, Mitchell Burgess, Robin Green, Diana Son, Angela Amato Velez
