Lennie James Quotes

I love crime procedurals. I always have. I love cop shows.

I think, very often, we're addicted to procedurals, those good guy/bad guy shows, and the 'problem' with procedurals is they all follow the same formula: The bad guy does his thing, the good guy goes after him, and in most cases, the good guy figures out who did it and catches him.

The most credible police shows I've ever seen were 'Barney Miller' on TV and 'The French Connection' movie. They showed the tedious side of police work.

Our TV and movie cops are usually in heels and pencil skirts.

The 'Love Undercover' series features two cops, a street rat, and a construction worker as the lead heroes.

On 'CSI: NY,' the audience knew I was a really good guy, and I caught the bad guy.

I went down for a week with the Houston Marshals. I didn't know that they hated paperwork as much as I hated it. They loathe it, man. They want to be in their cars catching the bad guys. They don't want to be filling out paperwork about the bad guys, you know, and the ones they've caught.

Believe me, although I really like the show, the reality of Philly Homicide is nothing like CBS's 'Cold Case.'

Cop shows are by definition melodramatic; they're larger than life. They create very stark contrasts and conflicts emotionally. They're provocative, assuming they grapple with - to the extent that cop shows are mirrors of the culture.

I will live in TV Land watching 'Columbo.' I also like my 'Forensic Files,' all of that true crime.

Police officers see everything, and they experience everything, and they don't always act correctly.

We're all used to seeing a lot of cop shows, some of them brilliant, some of them very generic.

It's so much more difficult to get police officers to testify against other police officers.

I didn't watch a lot of cop shows growing up, but I am a huge fan of 'Southland' now.

As a filmmaker, I tilt towards stories which are crime-led.

I am a fan of crime investigative series.

'Line Of Duty' is first and foremost a thriller. But I hope it will also be seen as a revisionist commentary on 21st century policing.

In movies you get to do that. Sometimes with the vigilante justice movie he has to also tangle with police, which are traditional or security people. Is there going to be any of that in this?

I'm a huge fan of things like The Wire and The Shield.

I love a sexy caper show, and I love shows about con artists.

I watch a lot of true crime on TV.

I still have admiration for the vast majority of police officers, but there is no denying that some are guilty of mistreating the people they are supposed to serve.

I joke that, 'Give us forty-two minutes, and we'll get your bad guy for you.'

The Green Hornet was a human superhero. And he didn't wear a clown costume. And he was a criminal - in the eyes of the law - and in the eyes of the criminal world.

Exposing police lying is difficult largely because it is rare for the police to admit their own lies or to acknowledge the lies of other officers. This reluctance derives partly from the code of silence that governs police practice and from the ways in which the system of mass incarceration is structured to reward dishonesty.