I was long overdue a rewatch of Shawn Ryan’s masterpiece drama and when it appeared on Amazon Prime, it neatly solved the problem I had. I bought Seasons 3 and 4 in America years ago and I don’t have the DVD player to watch them on NTSC any more. With that stumbling block out of the way, I took that journey once again with the Farmington Strike Team.

My God, how good is The Shield? I know people tend to gravitate more to The Wire when talking about ‘best ever’ and such. I love The Wire, and it probably has more social commentary and so on, but for excitement; for raw power, intensity and punch, The Shield is very difficult to top.

In Vic Mackey, it has a protagonist every bit as dark as Breaking Bad‘s Walter White. Right from the end of the first episode, you know you’re dealing with someone different. Over seven seasons, it becomes easy to forget how it began – credit to the writers and Michael Chiklis’ brilliance and on screen charisma for that.

Beyond the lead character, however, where Breaking Bad had a small core of well-written characters, The Shield has an entire ensemble. Each of them has development and clear motivations over the show’s run. Everywhere you turn, there is a character you can invest in or a conflict that can intrigue you, driven by dialogue that rarely drops below utter brilliance.The way characters are constantly being put through the meat grinder makes for gripping viewing that rarely lets up. It’s not all grim, though – there is a lighter element to proceedings in the form of a great streak of humour and brilliant one-liners peppered throughout.

It has the procedural elements and the stuff that you’d normally expect from a police show, but it’s so much more than that. At the heart of it are the four members of the Strike Team but it’s about so much more than them; more than Vic Mackey.

Beyond them are Dutch and Claudette. Claudette Wyms, played by CCH Pounder, might just be one of my favourite ever screen detectives (that’s a post for later). Then there’s David Aceveda and his political shenanigans, Dani and Julien, Corrine and the kids, not to mention the brilliantly written side characters and antagonists – no wonder big names like Forest Whittaker and Glenn Close wanted to be involved. I still can’t believe that drug dealer and low life Antwon Mitchell is played by the same guy who voices the friendly pirate truck in Canadian STEM cartoon, Blaze and the Monster Machines. It’s easy to forget about individual little bits of brilliance as you think about the series as a whole. I can’t, for example, write a piece about The Shield without saying just how brilliant Walton Goggins is in it, especially in the last few episodes. He’s good in everything but damn, he’s just off the charts as we move towards the final act.

The whole cast deliver all the way through. There’s just too many great moments to mention,

Anyway, it’s a fantastic series and, if you haven’t seen it, well worth a look. Every season has something great to offer and the tension and pace rarely let up. It’s got shocks, laughs, twists, nail-biting tension and an actual heart behind all of it. If you’ve already seen it, then dammit, see it again, unless you’re just a special kind of ‘B’. Go on, seek it out before the foot choppers get to you!

I absolutely loved watching The Shield again. It’s a tour de force and has lost none of the punch it had when its run ended in 2008.

All the best. I’m off now to carry on with Shawn Ryan’s latest project – The Night Agent – on Netflix.

Richard