Flashpoint

Plenty of cop shows -- especially the American ones -- glamorize the action and skirt around the issue of emotional fallout; this one deserves credit for steering the focus toward the characters' feelings at play in these life-and-death situations. Rather than sticking to visual drama and suspense, the show attempts to tell the back stories that impact the actions of the cops as well as the offenders. The result is a more cerebral take on the standard police drama like Law & Order, with the obvious omission of any courtroom scenes allowing more time to explore the characters' state of mind and motivations for their actions. In some cases, this blurs the line between black and white, right and wrong, reflecting the complicated nature of the law when it's filtered through human emotions.

That said, the fact that Flashpoint almost goes out of its way to portray a shooting as a negative experience can bog the show down a bit. Some scenarios warrant using lethal force on an offender, but the decision to do so is a lengthy, agonizing one. On one hand, it gives viewers a better sense of the issues at play in a real-world version of the events; on the other, it works against the show's entertainment factor. Ultimately, though, this is a heady commentary on the work of elite public servants whose jobs put them in harm's way and force them to make life-and-death decisions every day.