Forget Task, FX's 7-Part Crime Masterpiece Is An Even Better Dirty Cop Show

Published Sep 26, 2026, 5:00 PM EDT Ben Sherlock is a Tomatometer-approved film and TV critic who runs the massively underrated YouTube channel I Got Touched at the Cinema. Before working at Screen Rant, Ben wrote for Game Rant, Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop. He's also an indie filmmaker, a standup comedian, and an alumnus of the School of Rock. In recent years, HBO has cornered the market on detective dramas about morally gray detectives. Most recently, the premium cabler has treated us to Task, starring Mark Ruffalo as a Catholic priest-turned-FBI agent who comes to the working-class suburbs of Philadelphia to foil a string of robberies of drug houses. Before Task, its creator Brad Ingelsby came up with a different cop show for HBO: Mare of Easttown, starring Kate Winslet as a former hometown hero whose failure to solve a local murder has made her a pariah. Before that, of course, there was True Detective, in which the messy lives of Detectives Marty Hart and Rust Cohle start to bleed into their murder investigation. The biggest mystery in True Detective isn’t the whodunit; it’s what happened to these two guys’ friendship over the course of so many years. The stark contrast between the two timelines keeps us engaged beyond the hook of the murder mystery. Back in the days of Dragnet and Columbo, cop shows were cut-and-dried case-of-the-week procedurals in which the good guys threw the book at the bad guys. But shows like Task and True Detective and Mare of Easttown have all explored the moral complexity of policing, and the emotional baggage that comes with the job. The Shield Is Still The Best Dirty Cop Show On Television When Shawn Ryan created The Shield, he recognized that the real world had outgrown TV’s traditional portrayal of good, honest lawmen. After the Rodney King beating and the Rampart scandal, Ryan couldn’t make a show about the L.A.P.D. where the officers are all noble, honest, upstanding citizens who live only to protect and serve, because we know that’s not the case. Instead, Ryan went the other way and made a cop show where all the cops are crooked. Vic Mackey is essentially Tony Soprano with a badge; he’s a ruthless killer who keeps a roof over his family’s heads through shady, illicit means. His Strike Team is full of brazenly corrupt cops who skim cash from crime scenes, tamper with evidence, and kill without remorse. They see the laws as a polite suggestion: rules for thee, but not for me. In the very first episode, we see Vic murder one of his fellow boys in blue in cold blood, and blame the death on a local drug dealer. The genius of that pilot episode is the bait-and-switch. Internal Affairs’ Terry Crowley is introduced as a more traditional protagonist, going undercover to expose the Strike Team’s corruption, but then he’s gunned down in the final scene. As it turns out, our real “protagonist” is Terry’s killer. The Shield was the first cop show about corrupt cops, and even after all its imitators have come and gone, it’s still the best. Task's Tom Brandis Is The Mirror Image Of The Shield's Vic Mackey Task is a modern take on The Shield’s formula, bringing a real grit and intensity and moral ambiguity to a typical cop show, but its lead character Tom Brandis is a warped mirror image of Vic. They have some key similarities, but they also have some fundamental differences. They’re both flawed, morally gray law enforcement specialists leading elite units, but they’re actually polar opposites in many aspects of their personalities and character arcs. Tom has more remorse than Vic, and Vic is a lot angrier than Tom. Above all, both Mark Ruffalo and Michael Chiklis give incredible performances in these roles. They bring so much depth and nuance and authenticity to their characters in Task and The Shield that they feel like real human beings. Along with David Simon’s own HBO masterpieces, The Wire and We Own This City, these shows have done the impossible: they’ve humanized dirty cops, and made us care about them. The Shield Release Date 2002 - 2008-00-00 Network FX Cast Catherine Dent Danielle 'Danny' Sofer