It’s pretty well known I’m a bit of a crime show fan. I don’t know why this is, exactly. I never had any desire to work in forensics, law enforcement, or law. And I’ve never once fantasized about being some kind of criminal. But I do know this fandom is something essential to my being, and the WAY I know is that it has always been there. As a little kid, I loved Cagney & Lacey and Magnum P.I., and I snuck out of bed to watch Hill Street Blues “with” my parents, peeking out from the stairwell that led to the family room. Moonlighting, Remington Steele, CHiPs … I can still remember entire plot-lines.

As a pre-teen, home alone and scaring the shit out of myself watching Unsolved Mysteries in the dark basement of our house, my “thing” for this kind of show evolved. Robert Stack fed my irrational fear of alien abduction, and I was sure every manhunt-ee on America’s Most Wanted was hiding out in the woods behind our house. And do not even speak to me of The X-Files.

I have loved CSI since its first days, and while I don’t watch it regularly anymore, I still appreciate it for its camp depiction of crime solving and its fetishy plots. (I do need to catch up with the new cast.) I have watched an episode or two of CSI:NY, but I can’t get past that Kanakaredes robot.

Well, and then there’s my FAVORITE of the trio, Miami. You can’t criticize this show for being “over the top,” “a comedy,” or “cheesy,” because it’s completely self-aware. Its characters are two-dimensional stereotypes of themselves. I don’t think we’re meant to care about them, really, or see them as endearing, so much as to find them glamorous. Fifty percent of the plots center around the characters themselves; if not for the dramatically sunglassed Horatio Caine and his complicated personal life full of damsels in distress, it seems there would be little need for a detective force in Miami at all. And anyway it’s a proven fact that nothing helps a forensic scientist get the job done like a pair of boobs popping out of a blazer three sizes too small and long, gorgeous hair flowing all over the evidence.

Even non-crime-show fans love a good episode of Law & Order, and the new season is fantastic. (That would be Season 19—amazing.) L&O is tops at dangling just enough personal storyline about its cast of characters to make you interested in them, without the show’s being ABOUT them. I love that I can plug into any episode of this show, anytime, and leave it at the end not feeling like I need to watch the next one in order to know how something turns out. Just satisfied with the wholeness of the episode itself. The oh-so-obvious setups of rhetorical sides of debated issues are interesting to me, too, and I make no apologies for it.

SVU is still great, too, although I find it’s become a bit too much about the regular characters for me. And yeah, I do like Criminal Intent. I know it’s controversial to like, but it entertains me.

All I have to say about The Closer is: Don’t talk to me while this show is on. Because I will punch you in order to silence you so I can continue to devote my full attention to its gloriousness. It is as good as Homicide: Life on the Street, some of the best television ever made.

I have a real appreciation for the reenactment shows on A&E. Cold Case Files is like the grandaddy of crime shows in my book. American Justice is great. In fictional dramas, sexy medical examiners help out with, say, interviewing suspects, DNA comes back in an hour, newspapers write daily stories about heroic detectives. In the real world, not so much. A&E often puts together specials about serial killers and such, too, and these mesmerize me. Even the low-budget Oxygen shows—Snapped and Captured—as awful as they are, I could watch marathons of them.

So, to finally get to the title of this post. Just what IS my new favorite crime show? Is it The Beast? Um, no. So far, this show is pretty awful. A cool idea poorly executed—another In Plain Sight. The show I have fallen immediately in love with is Lie to Me. It’s got that House-esque main character, a complicated, flawed guy, who isn’t always likable and lives an ironic career (House is a brilliant doctor who can’t cure his own pain; Cal Lightman is a studied genius in the science of body language and expression who is a bit tortured by his knowledge of how much lying goes on). It’s got that CSI brand of “educating,” wherein protege Torres—a “natural” but without an education—is forever having the science explained to her, for OUR benefit. And it’s got Kelli Williams, beloved darling from The Practice and Medical Investigation. Will it be plotted like House? Who cares! Who doesn’t love House, despite the formulaic and ridiculously far-fetched plots? Will it be as inaccurate a representation of crime solving as CSI? Probably. I think we can count on these overworked crime-solving specialists to take a personal interest in every case, and to go beyond the call of reality to make things “right.” Anyway, I’ll be eager for every new episode. Love it.

Let’s see, others …. maybe you can help me complete my list.
Saving Grace—never seen it, but I hear it’s good.
Bones—only watched one episode, and it didn’t reel me in.
Crossing Jordan—I’ve watched way too much of this crappy, crappy show.
NCIS–ditto. Back to back to back episodes? Sure.
The First 48—not as into this as the other A&E shows, but I watch from time to time.
Veronica Mars—I know, I know, I need to watch this! I have no excuse; I even have the first season on DVD!
Monk—cute enough, I can take it or leave it.