h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What is it about a police drama that makes for a great television show?

Simple. Each week you've got a perfect formula for a good story.

There's the inciting action (the crime), the inevitable investigation which builds toward the climax (the arrest), followed by a bit of follow-up and you're done. Classic story development diagram!

Add to this the fact that most people are fascinated with police work and the details of arrests - at the weekly paper I edited, we listed every single crime reported by the police and it filled a whole page and advertisers fought to be on there each week (it was prime space with the most readership after the front page!).

Also, most reporters/writers cut their teeth writing crime stories for their newspapers so every hack out there has a couple of stereotypical cops that they can flesh into a character for a television programme. And their coverage of crime also provides them with loads of great story ideas.

My personal favourite from my days on the police beat was a couple who were charged with writing bad checks and passing them off to area businesses. As it turned out, they went before the judge on Valentine's Day and the man turned state's evidence against his girlfriend to get off with a lighter sentence. Very romantic!

It'd be a perfect story for a show like Law and Order to do next Valentine's Day...

To continue the thought, shows like CSI are actually starting to cause prosecuters a lot of concern.

As potential juries see these shows on television, they begin to have unrealistic expectations of real police forensic work and are failing to convict people because the evidence wasn't a slam dunk like on television!

Is there anything more frightening than trial by jury in the USA?