John Oliver on “Law & Order” @THR @iamjohnoliver @lawandordertv

From The Hollywood Reporter: John Oliver Criticizes ‘Law & Order’ and Dick Wolf for Unrealistic, Highly Favorable Portrayal of Police.

The article by THR’s staff says in part,

After expressing alarm that several real-life officers of the law have said they have learned how to do their job by watching Law & Order and its spinoffs, Oliver turned his focus to Wolf. Oliver noted that Wolf has a “close, behind-the-scenes relationship with the NYPD, employing officers as consultants and boasting about the access he had.”

 

Scholars have been examining the pro-police and pro-prosecutor bent of legal dramas and identify it as a trend which has been going on for some time, although it has competed with a pro-defense trend. See Ken Dowler’s survey essay, “Police Dramas on Television,” in the Oxford Research Encyclopedias series here. See also Sabin, Wilson, Speidel, and Faucette, Cop Shows (2015).The pro-police point of view appears in foreign police shows as well. See Alan Clarke, Holding the Blue Lamp: Television and the Police in Britain, 19 Crisis in Theory and Social Policy 44 (Summer 1983). A lot to discover about the portrayal about law enforcement on tv!