Cops, the American reality TV series, has been cancelled in the wake of global protests against police brutality.
Cops, I am convinced, is a show nobody watches in full. Maybe you’ll catch a snippet on TV in a bad hotel or at 2am while you’re waiting for a HSP. The series originally launched on Fox in 1989, making it one of the longest-running shows in television history. Cops lived on Fox for 25 years before making the move to Spike TV, now Paramount Network, in 2013.
The network, which was scheduled to premiere season 33 on Monday, confirmed the news in a statement to Variety today.
“Cops is not on the Paramount Network and we don’t have current future plans for it to return,” a spokesperson said. And that’s that.
Cops has long been the subject of criticism for how it portrays minorities in contrast to officers. Podcaster Dan Taberski recently dived into the series in Running from Cops, which analysed hundreds of episodes of the show. At one point, Taberski detailed how cops would sometimes coerce subjects into signing releases to be filmed on the show. The podcast even found cases where people said they didn’t give their permission to appear in episodes, but did anyway.
Reality TV aside, a number of actors who play cops on fictional shows have donated money to the National Bail Fund Network to support protesters demanding justice for George Floyd. Last week, Brooklyn Nine-Nine creator Dan Goor announced the entire cast had pledged USD$100,000 to The National Bail Fund.
“The cast and showrunner of Brooklyn 99 condemn the murder of George Floyd and support the many people who are protesting police brutality nationally,” Goor shared in a statement on Twitter last week.
https://twitter.com/djgoor/status/1267984636329824261
