Cold Cases

There was a show that used to be on prime-time Sunday night, I guess, called Cold Case. I've caught a few episodes in rerun latenight on one of the free channels we have. The premise is that a Philly cop team solves old, still open, cases, AKA "cold" cases. The gimmick is that the scenes of the crime-time are played out with one set of actors, and then usually a second set of older actors are used during the investigation phase, and they occasionally flicker between the two, for dramatic effect.

If you like cop mystery/procedural shows, it's probably serviceable. If you're one of the many The Wire fans, most cops shows are ruined for you. The fully preposterous nature of solving crimes on a single span of forty-two minutes of show is made painfully clear in that hyper-realistic show.

But then there's the cold case aspect  of the show. Another show they used to show on A&E, I think, and now on some local channel in the morning, is called Cold Case Files, and it's a documentary style cop show about how old cold cases are solved. This show is hard to watch as well, but for a different reason. It seems like the only cold case files that get solved these days are rape/murders where now they have DNA technology and old swabs left over.

I'd be willing to guess that the prime-time cop drama doesn't feature too many rape/murders getting solved due to DNA samples. That's a little too, eh, much of a downer for Sunday night television, I guess.