One of the greatest shows in the history of TV has just been made available to stream.
Since 1999, after HBO released The Sopranos, a new Golden Age of Television saw the premiere of numerous prestige shows considered by many to be among the best ever produced.
These shows, which many have on their watchlists as essential viewing include 24, Six Feet Under, The Wire, Lostand Mad Men.
However, one drama that you might have yet to get around to watching has just been added to Prime Video by Amazon: The Shield.
Premiering in 2002, The Shield, created by Shawn Ryan, starred Michael Chiklis as Vic Mackey, leader of a Strike Team who uses illegal methods to maintain law and order in Los Angeles.
The series, which achieved a sweat-inducing amount of tension as the net repeatedly closed in on Mackey, clearly inspired Breaking Bad, and is widely considered to be one of the greatest television shows of all time. It has a score of 8.7 on IMDb.
Also starring in the series is Walton Goggins, recently Emmy nominated for Fallout, Kenny Johnson, CCH Pounder, Jay Karnes and Catherine Dent, with Glenn Close and Forest Whitaker starring in key roles throughout its seven-season run.
Mackey is one of the biggest antiheroes thrust to the forefront of TV shows during this era, standing tall alongside Tony Soprano (The Sopranos), Walter White (Breaking Bad) and Michael C Hall’s serial killer Dexter Morgan.
Chiklis won an Emmy for playing Mackey in 2002, beating Hall, Peter Krause (Six Feet Under), Martin Sheen (The West Wing) and Kiefer Sutherland (24).
Pounder and Close received one nomination apiece for their roles as Claudette Wyms and Monica Rawlings, respectively, but lost to Blythe Danner (Huff) and Patricia Arquette (Medium).
Bizarrely, the series was never nominated for Best Drama at the Emmys, but it won that award at the Golden Globes in 2003. It was nominated alongside 24, Six Feet Under, The Sopranos and The West Wing.
Over the years, the show’s legacy has been thrown into question due to the rejection of police-based projects labelled “copaganda”. However, its fans say that The Shield, while a police procedural featuring honest cops, offers a scathing commentary on police corruption.
Speaking to The Independent in 2022, in celebrarion of the show’s 20th anniversary, actor Cathy Cahlin Ryan, who played Mackey’s wife, Corrine, said: “I don’t know if they could do this show today. In some ways it was ahead of its time, with everything that’s gone on – all the police brutality that we’re hearing and seeing in front of our eyes, and it’s like [how] it was depicted on The Shield.
“I mean, it’s not like nobody knew about it. It’s an underbelly that’s not going away.”
