If you can get past the Cops-style camera work (which suits the show really well and isn't quite as nausea-inducing as it is in Cops itself, but still takes getting used to), Southland is fucking awesome. Not least because John Cooper is (1) a bad-ass training cop with a past the degree of damage in which we're only just beginning to see, (2) played by the awesome and drop-dead sexy Michael Cudlitz, and (3), yes, canonically gay - a fact the show handles fascinatingly (no announcement, no whispers, no feather boa or sequins - just Coop in an all-male bar at the end of a bad day, Coop being improbably [if stone-facedly] tender with a drag queen shop-owner [this is LA, by the way] who's just been beaten and robbed).

Five Jacks. Oh, man. You could write that, y'know.

I'll crochet you a comfy cordon, honey.