10 top cop shows for Donut Day

We’re kicking back with the cops this Friday, because it’s Donut Day! We’ve lined up the usual suspects, sorted them from silly to serious, and given them a full-body search. Along the way we’ve taken note of the cops with special talents – those extra sprinkles on the donut – and taken a nibble of each to test for freshness in our delicious donut moment. 

So gather your squad, your coffee, and a baker’s dozen, and let’s go catch those series, people! 

Quick list

1: Brooklyn Nine-Nine Season 1-8

2: Black Ops

3: Panhandle

4: The Rookie Season 1-6

5: The Irrational

6: The Equalizer Season 1-4

7: S.W.A.T Season 1-8

8: The Calling

9: Happy Face

10: Drift: Partners in Crime Season 1-2

10 top cop shows for Donut Day

1. Brooklyn Nine-Nine Season 1-8

Case file: Follow the exploits of the Detective Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg) and his lovable crew of weirdo colleagues like Lieutenant Terry Jeffords (Terry Crews) as they police the NYPD’s 99th Precinct under the eye of their strict, long-suffering commander, Captain Ray Holt (Andre Braugher). 

Extra sprinkles? Everybody at Nine-Nine has a little something weird about them! It’s a recipe for greatness. 

Delicious donut moment: In Season 5, episode 14, when they suspect that their murder suspect, a dentist (Sterling K Brown), is lying through his teeth, Holt and Peralta combine their chalk and cheese powers in an episode-long interrogation that spotlights the fact that both are incredibly competent detectives. 

2. Black Ops

Case file: This six-episode BBC comedy series centres on Black East London community support officers Dom (series writer, creator and executive producer Gbemisola Ikumelo) and Kay (Hammed Animashaun), who join the Greater London Police hoping to clean up their community. Instead they are given no power and absurd tasks – until they are recruited to infiltrate a local drug gang, a job they’re much too bougie, naive, religious and laid back for. Now they’re undercover, and underqualified!

Extra sprinkles? Kay’s true faith and belief that he can build bridges in the community means that he focuses on trying to help and support people, rather than assuming the worst of them – which can really catch a hardened criminal off guard.

Delicious donut moment: As proof that the British will banter over anything, watch Dom and Kay furtively burying a body in episode 2. What a shambles. 

3. Panhandle

Case file: Crime comedy-drama. Ticket-happy Florida traffic cop Cammie Lord (Tiana Okoye) reluctantly agrees to help a rich shut-in named Bell Prescot (Luke Kirby) solve a murder that happened on his mansion’s grounds, along with his wife’s murder. The pair go on a crime-solving spree, roping in many of their small town’s eccentrics. 

Extra sprinkles? Bell has a crippling anxiety disorder, an academic interest in everything, and an online degree in criminology. He turned to homicide investigation as a hobby while staying shut inside his mansion for five years with his mother, Millicent (Lesley Ann Warren), and his pet alligator, Moseley. 

Delicious donut moment: In episode 3, acting on a series of deductions Cammie makes, she, Bell and Dr Otis (Wallace Smith) look for clues that point to a victim being murdered on a beach rather than in a swamp (including a fly wing) – as per the sloppy original police report.

4. The Rookie Season 1-6

Case file: Police procedural drama series. John Nolan (Nathan Fillion) joins the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) as a trainee because he sincerely wants to do what’s right. He and his fellow rookies share an uncynical passion for justice, and form a work family under the guidance of the commanding officers, Wade Grey (Richard T Jones) and Zoe Andersen (Mercedes Mason).

Extra sprinkles? John is 45 years old when he joins the LAPD as their oldest-ever trainee officer – which was inspired by real-life LAPD officer William Norcross (an executive producer and script consultant on the series).

Delicious donut moments: The Rookie’s documentary/reality episodes like Season 3, episode 7 (with Frankie Muniz playing child star-turned-cult-leader Corey Harris, who keeps the mummified body of Charlie Chaplin under his bed), Season 4, episode 16, and Season 5, episode 18 (guest-starring NSYNC’s Lance Bass) all offer fascinating, hilarious new perspectives on the LAPD.

5. The Irrational

Case file: This crime drama series is loosely based on the non-fiction book Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist. Behaviour psychology professor Alec Mercer (Jesse L Martin) helps law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, to understand the human behaviour behind high-stakes criminal cases.

Extra sprinkles? Alec has burn scars over 60% of his body thanks to a church bombing that left him with some gaps in his memory, and a tendency to make up stories about how he got burned, from drag racing, to cooking accidents.

Delicious donut moment: In Season 1, episode 11, Alec uses his understanding of how corrupt, powerful people like those they “conquer” to behave around them. And he fawns and flatters his way into getting a confession out of one of those notorious “bad apples” who use their connections within law enforcement to cover up their crimes and silence accusers. 

6. The Equalizer Season 1-4

Case file: Mysterious single mom and former CIA agent Robyn McCall (Queen Latifah) becomes her community’s guardian angel while raising her daughter, Delilah (Laya DeLeon Hayes). With the help of her old sniper friend Mel (Liza Lapira), Aunt Vi (Lorraine Toussaint), and her one-time mentor, ex-CIA director-turned-private security head, William Bishop (Chris Noth), Robyn takes on cases for people who dare not go to official law enforcement or have been failed by the justice system. Oh, and just a hint, don’t think you can pick a fight with Aunt Vi at a charity shop (see Season 2, episode 5).

Extra sprinkles: Being ex-CIA gives Robyn a wide range of “not your mama” superspy skills, from riding motorbikes, to leaping fences, to wielding a sword. 

Delicious donut moment: This happened offscreen, but Queen Latifah told Variety that Dolly Parton once wrote her a letter to tell her how much she admired her “badass” performance as Robyn. 

PS: Binge The Equalizer Season 5 from Friday, 27 June. 

7. S.W.A.T Season 1-8

Case file: Action drama police procedural set in the LAPD’s Twenty Squad – a “last resort” Special Weapons and Tactics unit led by former Marine Sergeant Daniel “Hondo” Harrelson (Shemar Moore), who’s appointed to the role in a PR move to dodge protests about the LAPD’s issues with racism and violence after his original team leader kills an unarmed Black teenager. But as Hondo tells the press in Season 4, that’s not a problem that’ll just go away when you give the cops military-style equipment and all the explosions their hearts desire. 

Extra sprinkles: Jim Street (Alex Russell) uses his hard-knock childhood – his drug addict mom killed his abusive father and he wound up being raised in foster care – to add a little rebellious spice to the team and prepare for an undercover role in Season 3, episode 12.

Delicious donut moment: S.W.A.T really shines in episodes like School (Season 2, episode 11), which flashes back to the impact of a school shooting, that don’t shy away from the impact that constant exposure to trauma has on the squad’s lives. No macho tantrums about talking to therapists in this show, instead they rally around each other, check in on one another, and take their mental health as seriously as Hondo takes his workouts. And just look at him, he’s ripped!

8. The Calling

Case file: Police drama series adapted from Dror Mishani’s novel The Missing File (2011) by David E Kelley (Big Little Lies). In Season 1, along with a grab bag of cases, NYPD detective Avi Avraham (Jeff Willbusch) and his partner, Law & Order-loving Janine Harris (Juliana Canfield), take on two major mysteries: that of a missing teenaged boy, and a bomb threat at a daycare centre.

Extra sprinkles? Avraham is a devout Orthodox Jewish man who tries to form spiritual connections to the cases he works on, giving him an uncanny ability to mirror and empathise with suspects during interrogations. He also uses free-drawing as a way of connecting with the victims.

Delicious donut moment: In episode 4, while they’re sharing a drink over their case, Avi and Janine realise that they’re both having doubts about their case being wrapped up, and pick on the one loose thread – a child’s contradiction of what their parents are saying. 

9. Happy Face

Case file: Crime drama series Happy Face was inspired by (and reimagines) Melissa Jesperson-Moore’s 2009 autobiography Shattered Silence, which centered on finding out at the age of 16 that her father, Keith Hunter Jesperson, had a secret life as The Happy Face killer. The series starts with Keith (Dennis Quaid) blackmailing Melissa (named Melissa Reed in the series and played as an adult by Annaleigh Ashford) to visit him in prison, where he promises to reveal his ninth victim by giving Melissa a series of clues, linking the murder to some events in her childhood. Melissa, who works behind the scenes on a true crime TV show, is forced to play detective to save an innocent man. 

Extra sprinkles? In the world of true-crime podcasts and citizen detective obsessions, do you get more “Silence of the Lambs extra” than having to collaborate with your serial killer dad to solve crimes?

Delicious donut moment: In episode 7, Melissa’s mom June (Kathleen Duborg) reframes one of Melissa’s favourite “innocent” childhood memories of growing up with Keith as her dad. Yikes!

10. Drift: Partners in Crime Season 1-2

Case file: German Police procedural (English subtitles) with a touch of buddy comedy. Estranged brothers and police officers Ali (Ken Duken) and Leo Zeller (Fabian Busch) are brought back together after Ali’s role in a prisoner transfer ends in car chases, explosions, and a highway bridge collapsing. The brothers become snared in an international arms deal conspiracy while trying to clear Ali’s name, and their search for the truth will take them from the Bavarian Alps, to Athens, to the Peloponnese, bickering all the way.

Extra sprinkles: Ali’s hobbies include MMA fighting, which comes in handy a lot! Don’t bother tying this man to a chair; you’re just giving him a weapon. 

Delicious donut moment: In Season 2, episode 5, after the brothers set a scarecrow on fire, they go to chase down clues at a missing person’s apartment. As they prepare to break in, Leo begs Ali in true sibling style, “Tell me what you’re doing so I can talk you out of it!”