Tako Approved: Southland

The season premier of Southland was this week and it was great. Here is the review from the Atlantic:

If you want something that's going for a lot more of a documentary feel then Southland (on its fourth season), about the gritty days of L.A. beat cops, might be more to your liking. Also boasting a strong company of actors — among them Regina King, Ben McKenzie, Michael Cudlitz, and Shawn Hatosy —Southland, like Justified, feels like carefully crafted, deliberate work done by smart people, and that's always appreciated on television, especially in a genre as fattened and well-worn as the cop show. Season four special guest star Lucy Liu is a welcome addition; it can be easy to forget in light of all her recent butt-kicking roles that she can also be quite nimble with dialogue; she blends in seamlessly with the show's shaky-cam, day-in-the-life natural aesthetic. Even when, yes, the show goes a little too big. Last night's premiere, simply titled "Wednesday," followed two squad cars as they roamed their beats and, boy if what happened was actually a typical L.A. police officer's Wednesday, the turnover rate at the LAPD would probably be a lot higher than it is. There were several chases, two of which ended in gory death, an attempted suicide in a warehouse, and a big, violent shootout in a police station. That's quite a day! Meanwhile Regina King was dealing with a protected witness who refused to stay protected, another situation that ended grimly and dramatically. So yeah, it's sometimes hard to believe that Southland is like looking at documentary footage of actual L.A. cops' daily lives, but it feels real enough to be engaging in that you-are-there kind of way, while also entertaining enough to sustain itself as a primetime TV show.