Cop shows are as thick as thieves on the landscape of our television screens. If a show doesn't feature attention starved ex-celebrities kicking each other out of houses or people humiliating themselves for recording contracts, there's a good chance it features police officers, doctors, lawyers, or some combination thereof. Because of their ubiquity, I'm kind of burned out on them; when done well, however, shows about criminals and the people who dedicate their lives (sometimes literally) to catching them can neatly encapsulate many of the themes that make for compelling drama: social inequity, physical danger, families strained and cracking and surrogate families being built.In comic books, there are plenty of criminals. Many of them are of the gaudy, insane variety that we do not see as reflections of ourselves and society's ills. They are pursued and defeated by beings that similarly live above and outside of society, with some notable exceptions (The Punisher, for example, in most of his incarnations.) There are not a lot of cops. Well, they're there, but they aren't cast as the heroes in these dramas. They're cannon fodder, or annoyances, or people to kidnap or kill.
While not existing outside of the world in which these gaudy, insane villains exist, Gotham Central re-casts these police officers in the role we're accustomed to seeing them in on television. They are the ones who catch the bad guys. Sometimes they are the bad guys, because they're as flawed as we are, and sometimes as flawed as those they chase.
