Television

Fox Just Picked Up Four Drama Pilots. Three Of Them Are About Cops.

Tara Ariano
 

"So you like police procedurals, eh? Well, have all the police procedurals in the world!" - Fox.

But seriously, of the four drama pilots Fox just picked up for the 2013-14 TV season, three revolve around police officers. (The fourth is about a Nebraska state senator who moonlights as a close-up magician. Just kidding! It's about a lawyer.) But don't worry, these aren't your grandma's cop shows! One is set in the future and features a human cop with an android partner. One features a time-travelling Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison) solving crimes in present-day Sleepy Hollow, NY. And one is...about regular cops fighting gang-related crime (it has the inventive title Gang Related), so I guess that one is your grandma's cop show, particularly if she has a crush on Terry O'Quinn.

Assuming that all of these new cop shows work -- which they probably will -- here are a few premises and gimmicks we're pretty sure aspiring TV producers are currently incorporating into their one-hour pitches for the 2014-15 season.

  • Little Person cop
  • cop who's too socially anxious to interview witnesses directly so he uses a lookalike hand puppet
  • former stripper cop [try again]
  • current stripper cop
  • very conflicted anarchist cop
  • amnesiac cop [not new]
  • cop who's secretly a criminal [too close to this]
  • cop who specializes in busting perps who use auto-dialers to compromise the integrity of the voting on singing shows
  • cop who's great at his job despite having very bad skin
  • ballerina cop (meaning, he exclusively investigates crimes committed by or against ballerinas)
  • cop who's exceptionally great at integrating product-placement messaging
  • formerly Amish cop in the big city
  • FLDS cop enforcing the law in a separatist polygamist community
  • detective novelist cop [basically]
  • ticklish cop, but like, he's really ticklish
  • singing cops [nope]
  • cop who's torn between fighting crime and his very successful Etsy jewellery store
  • blind cop [nope, it's been done]
  • drag queen cop [forget you read this because we're writing a treatment right now]
  • mop-topped flip-flopped chop shop cop

PS YES, I know Bones, depicted up top, is not literally about police officers, it's about FBI agents, but give me a break, it's still a cop show.

Tara Ariano