Crime is a chaotic force that upends the social order. Procedural dramas comfort the audience by saying reason and morality can triumph over wrongdoing. While this may seem counterintuitive to ongoing storytelling—the resolution of conflict rather than constant engagement with it—the procedural provides regular, predictable catharsis in seeing how our institutions work diligently to apprehend and prosecute those who would bring chaos. While we know that’s not always true in reality, the genre provides the escapist comfort of a mad world restored to sanity.
Here, we dive into 10 of the best procedurals ever made, both for television and film.
The procedural approach works best on television, where you can tune in week after week and find reassurance that the systems we depend on to protect us will do so. The core value of this approach is level-headed competency. We want characters who see the worst of humanity and keep a cool head as they go about their work. While there may be interpersonal drama between the characters, they typically work diligently to find justice (compared to a show like “The Shield,” which involves cases to solve but its primary focus is the moral gray areas the characters operate in). On television, you can play this drama out for decades with consistent characters encountering a variety of crimes.
“Dragnet”
While Sgt. Joe Friday never actually said, “Just the facts, ma’am,” that could have been the ethos of this influential procedural. “Dragnet” started as a radio drama before creator Jack Webb transformed it into a popular 1950s series that ran for eight years (and eventually spawned three film adaptations and a few revival attempts). Webb himself played the straight-arrow Friday, the lead detective who solved a variety of cases in the Los Angeles area over 276 episodes. The picture of police work for an entire generation came largely from tuning in to see “Dragnet” every week.
“Hill Street Blues”
While co-creator Steven Bochco is probably known better for “NYPD Blue” and “L.A. Law” (and less known for the short-lived musical procedural “Cop Rock”), you’d be wise not to skip his first hit show, “Hill Street Blues.” Co-created with writer-producer Michael Kozoll, the series hits the usual beats while crafting the kind of rich, complex characters that would become staples of later police procedurals. Sgt. Phil Esterhaus (Michael Conrad) would encourage his officers at morning roll call, “Let’s be careful out there,” emphasizing that it’s a dangerous world these New York cops venture into. Utilizing more dynamic camera work than earlier procedurals, “Hill Street Blues” aimed to put viewers on the same beat as the cops, enhancing the drama of flawed figures walking the streets and telling stories about larger societal issues. It’s a tricky tightrope that the show sometimes stumbled on, but it was a necessary step forward for the genre.
“Law & Order”
Arguably the most successful police procedural of all time, this long-running series from former “Hill Street Blues” writer Dick Wolf birthed numerous spinoffs; though the show got canceled in 2010, it was resurrected in 2021 because you simply cannot stop the signature “DUN-DUN.” At its core, the show is an evolution of “Dragnet, ”specifically in how it added the “order” aspect of a case and looked at what attorneys go through after the initial investigation and interrogations are over. Although there have been dozens of cops and district attorneys on the show over the years, the attitude of “Law & Order” probably comes through best in the wry Detective Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), who meets the crimes of New York City with gallows humor.
“CSI: Crime Scene Investigation”
The 2000 series and its various spinoffs—including the 2021 revival, ‘CSI: Vegas’—took a more scientific approach to crime-solving than simply interrogating witnesses and chasing down leads. (Or at least it appears scientific enough; studies have noted the “CSI effect” on juries.) In the world of “CSI,” you look past people and go into wounds, shag carpeting, or wherever an effective camera zoom takes you to find trace amounts of evidence. If a show like “Law & Order” comforts the audience with competent officers, then “CSI” offers the idea that there are clear, scientific answers to the complexities of crime.
“NCIS”
How do you get more strait-laced than regular police? Military police! Donald P. Bellisario and Don McGill’s procedural investigates high-profile crimes specifically related to the Navy and Marines (NCIS stands for “Naval Criminal Investigative Service”). However, the show sometimes has to branch out—which happens when you’ve done more than 450 episodes over 20 years. But “NCIS” remains one of the most-watched shows on television. Streaming series—which typically rely on season-long narratives rather than the episodic approach of procedurals—are unlikely to create such a devoted following over that massive time span. As for the show itself, the characters are darker and more complex than you’d find on a series like “Dragnet”—demonstrating where audiences were 70 years ago and where they are now with what they want out of the genre.
Movie procedurals are a little trickier than their television counterparts, but there are some that embrace the format better than others.
“The Naked City” (1948)
If you want to see the genesis of the procedural as we know it, definitely take some time for Jules Dassin’s crime drama “The Naked City.” To a modern viewer, the way Dassin approaches the material—the murder of an ex-model—may seem a little corny with its knowing narration and upstanding cops. But Dassin is one of the most exciting directors to ever tackle the crime genre (he also helmed “Brute Force,” “Night and the City,” and “Rififi”), and “The Naked City” remains as electric as ever.
“High and Low” (1963)
In “High and Low,” Akira Kurosawa brilliantly intertwines hard-boiled sleuthing with personal drama, all surrounding a high-stakes kidnapping. The story is a race against time that cleverly splits its narrative—the first part is about the investigation, but the second part goes deeper into the societal motives behind crimes. While other procedurals may make nods to the motives and desires of criminals, there’s a deep well of emotional complexity and empathy in “High and Low” that underpins its competent police work.
“The Silence of the Lambs” (1991)
It’s understandably easy to be distracted by the powerhouse direction of Jonathan Demme’s thriller and the unforgettable lead performances from Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling and Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Hannibal Lecter. However, once you get past the image of Lecter wearing another man’s face and the disturbing psychological torrents, you can see how Starling’s heroism comes from her calm, unwavering investigation into Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine). The brilliant tension of the film comes from taking such a disturbing narrative and smashing it up against a young FBI agent who’s coming up to the edge of her own trauma, but will never let it dictate her own methodical work.
“Heat” (1995)
As Michael Mann’s classic thriller demonstrates, criminals can be just as systematic and self-destructive as cops. Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) runs a crew of thieves who plan their heists down to the last detail. LAPD Lieutenant Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) is tasked with taking McCauley and his team down. What ensues is a face-off between two men who consider themselves professionals; but their devotion to their work comes at a personal cost. What makes “Heat” such a great twist on a procedural is that both lead characters think they know all the angles, but neither can fully grasp their own personal shortcomings.
“Mystic River” (2003)
Cops and criminals exist side-by-side in this Oscar-winning Clint Eastwood film adapted from the Dennis Lehane novel of the same name. Childhood friends Jimmy (Sean Penn), Sean (Kevin Bacon), and Dave (Tim Robbins) now inhabit different pockets of Boston as adults. Jimmy is an ex-convict, Sean is a cop, and Dave is a convenience store owner who is still traumatized by the abduction and rape he suffered as a child at the hands of criminals posing as police officers. After Jimmy’s daughter (Emmy Rossum) is murdered, Sean and his partner Whitey (Laurence Fishburne) come in to investigate. There’s an interesting juxtaposition to this tangled web: Sean and Whitey play the case by the book, while Jimmy conducts his own underground investigation—with Dave the focal point between the two. The result elucidates how complicated the search for justice becomes when personal relationships are involved.