That Canadian/Canadien Cop show gets reviewed.

The Best TV Cop Show Is...Canadian?

 

Behind all the Canuck jokes lies a truth most Americans dont want to acknowledge: Canada does everything we can do -- better. Hockey. Health care. Urban planning. Even rodeo. (Im talking about the Calgary Stampede here, buckaroo.)

Now we can add police procedurals to that list. Sure, its an all-American genre, rooted in Hollywood noir and refined down the years by Dragnet, Kojak, Hawaii Five-Oh, and their ilk. But today its a genre gone to seed, at least on this side of the 49th parallel. Law & Order and its bazillion offspring, the entire absurd CSI franchise, countless one-off, one-trick ponies like Crossing Jordan and Numb3rs: these are morality plays for the too-easily entertained. Worse, their total predictability is the key to their entertainment -- and advertising -- value. Deviations from the pattern (crime-investigation-suspect-new evidence-new suspect-surprise-conclusion) are avoided like tainted meat. And so, every evening at 10:47, in living rooms across the nation, a dozen formulaic shows toss off their final, decisive plot twists -- just before the last commercial break, natch. What will happen? Stay tuned to find out!

Into this musty attic, Canadas Da Vincis Inquest comes like a cool breeze off the Pacific. The Da Vinci of the title is Dominic (played by Nicholas Campbell), chief coroner of the city of Vancouver and a man who has learned to tread lightly on the blood-soaked paths his job leads him down. He does the usual police-procedural things -- solves crimes, questions authority, rubs his bosses the wrong way -- but he never gives off the air, so common to his American counterparts, of a beleaguered saint. Our detectives treat murder as a dark window on the human condition. This, we are solemnly admonished, is death. On Da Vincis Inquest, the attitude is: thats life.

That Da Vinci is an altogether recognizable human being adds to the shows appeal. Hes divorced, but friendly with his ex; they share their teenage daughter without too much rancor; hes mostly on the wagon, but occasionally, to his genuine remorse, falls off it. Nobodys a genius on DVI; nobodys a complete asshole, nobodys a hero, and most importantly, nobodys a cliché. Plot lines occasionally trail off into nowhere, or -- gasp, reader, at the respect for the average Canadians powers of recall -- persist through several episodes. My god: Its almost like real life.

Da Vincis Inquest is not The Wire; its a primetime crime drama -- pure entertainment -- but its a great one. A smart one. You never actually need to watch its American counterparts: you know exactly whats going to happen before the first chung-chung stops echoing. Da Vinci, though -- you want to check in with him on now and then. See what hes been up to. Its always something interesting, and its always a good story. That, as they say in showbiz, is entertainment.

-- Edited by Uke at 01:24, 2008-08-25