Hannah Leef knows she should be studying for midterms this week. But she has to also make time to watch her all-time favorite episode of The Rookie, an ABC procedural drama about Los Angeles cops. (That would be season two, episode eight.) The 15 year old, who lives in New England, calls the show her “hyperfixation”.
Leef first watched the entire series, which is currently in its eighth season, in three weeks. “Which is, like, not healthy,” she admits. She keeps up with new episodes while constantly rewatching the series – which she’s done 10 times now. She’s hooked “about 12 or 13” of her friends on The Rookie, and one of them ploughed through the entire series in a week: “She did not sleep.”
Leef is not alone in her adoration. As the Los Angeles Times reported last week, the network procedural has an unlikely fan base in young people. According to Nielsen data, it was the most-streamed show among young people under 18 for all broadcast television series last year, beating out Abbott Elementary and High Potential (but not streaming only shows like Stranger Things). Dwayne Johnson recently took his preteen daughter, another superfan, on a tour of the show’s set. Creator Alexi Hawley, who declined a request to comment for this article, told The Times that he’s used to parents telling him how much their kids love the series.
It’s an unlikely success story. In an era of TikTok and YouTube, teens have never watched old-school television less. According to Nielson data, 90% of kids’ TV time comes from “non-traditional” options (mostly streaming services). The Rookie is the type of police procedural that’s been a network stalwart for generations – and yet zoomers love it.
But the Rookie’s official TikTok page has over 2.9m followers (for comparison the official accounts for The White Lotus and The Last Of Us both have less than 150,000, Stranger Things has 8.1m). Many teens discover the show on social media first. Jade Amirah Lewis, a 16-year-old from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, first encountered the show on YouTube, where she watched a few clipped scenes. “I noticed it actually has a vibe sort of like The Office,” Lewis said. “It’s very comical in some situations, but it also pans to more serious tones. You have time for every emotion in the show.”
Lewis, who wants to be an FBI agent when she grows up, finds its procedural format comforting. Most of the drama gets wrapped up in a tight hour. “Then you get to see it all over again next week,” Lewis said. “It’s a nice cycle.”
Fronted by gen X actor Nathan Fillion – who starred in Firefly, an early-aughts space drama that aired before these Rookie fans were born – the show centers around John Nolan, a divorced, middle-aged dad who uproots his life to become a LAPD officer. The oldest in his class, Nolan navigates generational divides with his fellow rookies while they serve on the force. There’s a long, slow-burn romance between a rookie and her training officer but it’s far from a rom com: in season two a killer kidnaps a cop, counting down the days until he murders her while the rest of the crew races to the rescue.
Katie Campione, a senior television and labor reporter at Deadline, says that the show’s popularity fits into a larger trend of younger audiences gravitating toward long running shows, many of which are decades old: Gilmore Girls, New Girl, Grey’s Anatomy, Criminal Minds.
“You get to spend hundreds of hours with the same characters and get to know them,” Campione said. “You just don’t see that a lot nowadays on TV.”
Mariah Smith, another young fan, runs a Rookie fan account on TikTok that boasts over 60,000 followers. Now 22, the Memphis college student started watching the series when she was 19. For years, she has never made plans on Tuesday nights, when the show airs. Smith has season tickets to her beloved NBA team, the Grizzlies. But when they played on Tuesdays, she’d sell the tickets, so she could watch the show. (The Rookie recently changed time slots from Tuesday nights to Mondays, creating more NBA conflicts, a nightmare for Smith.)
But even though it’s an appointment-to-view show, it doesn’t necessarily take up too much brainspace, “It’s easy to pay attention to it and do something else at the same time, whether that be scrolling on your phone or something else,” says Campione.
One of the most surprising things about the show’s popularity among young people is the show’s positive portrayal of the police. Younger Americans are the most likely to distrust law enforcement and network police procedurals have long been criticised as “copaganda” intended to subtly shape viewers’ attitudes.
Hawley, the showrunner, said that the police murder of George Floyd changed how he portrayed cops. “I tried to approach from a place of having cops trying to do the right thing,” Hawley told the Guardian in 2021 of the show’s earlier seasons. After Floyd’s murder, “It felt like being solely aspirational wasn’t good enough any more, that we were showing a version of policing that was alien to many people.” Consultants from Color of Change, a racial justice organization were brought on as advisers.
In one plot line, a racist cop who profiles suspects of color should be fired – but instead, he gets a slap on the wrist and stays on the force. It’s no happy ending, but it is realistic. “The show is trying to start these conversations about how people feel that law enforcement has failed them,” Campione said. “These are topics that a lot of people wish were being tackled in real life to a more substantial degree.”
The Rookie airs after Leef goes to bed, so she wakes up early the next morning and watches it before doing anything else. For her birthday, her best friend gave her a painted vinyl record with a track on it that’s played during an emotional scene in the series. She hung it on her wall, because she does not have a record player. (“I don’t think anyone has record players,” she said.) She forgets the song title, she tells me, but thinks it’s either Breathe Freely by Uncle Leo or If I Ain’t Got You by Alicia Keyes, both of which are on the soundtrack.
Eric Winter, who plays Sergeant Tim Bradford on the show, runs a rum brand called Palm Republic. Sometimes, he does promotional meet and greets to market his product. Leef really wants her dad to go to one. Sadly, she would not be allowed inside: “You have to be 21 or older.”
