--- title: "Southland" year: 2009 kind: "series" canonical: "https://film.one/tv/southland" fi1m_score: 76 critics_score: 74 critics_reviews: 6 published: "2026-09-17T12:50:32.360744+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T12:50:43.897135+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Southland (2009) Created by Ann Biderman · 42m · MPA TV-14 · Drama **Fi1m score: 76** · Critics 74 from 6 reviews *In a sentence:* Two cops in a car, a city coming apart around them, and the swearing bleeped out > Ann Biderman’s Los Angeles police series is at its best in a patrol car with Michael Cudlitz and Ben McKenzie, handheld, almost unscored, shot in hard daylight. In the detectives’ office it is a cop show you know. Worth your evenings, with that caveat. ## Synopsis Los Angeles. Ben Sherman (Ben McKenzie), a rookie fresh from the academy and richer than he lets on, reports for his first shift with the Los Angeles Police Department and is put in a patrol car with his training officer, John Cooper (Michael Cudlitz), who has seen everything and expects him to be useless. Across the division, Detective Lydia Adams (Regina King) works homicides by day and looks after her mother at night, alongside her partner Russell Clarke (Tom Everett Scott). Officers Sammy Bryant (Shawn Hatosy) and Chickie Brown (Arija Bareikis) ride the same streets, and Dewey Dudek (C. Thomas Howell) drinks. Sherman wants to prove he belongs. Cooper wants him to get through the day alive. ## Review Ann Biderman’s *Southland* opens the way every episode will: a freeze-frame, a dry voice telling us what the man in the picture is about to learn, and then a patrol car pulling out into hard daylight. It is a Los Angeles police drama with nine regulars, produced by John Wells, and its first season ran to seven episodes in 2009. It looked like nothing else American network television was making at the time, and for long stretches it behaves like it. It is worth your evenings, with a caveat: it is two programmes stitched together, and only one of them is unusual. The unusual one is in the car. Officer John Cooper (Michael Cudlitz) is a training officer with a rule for everything, and Ben Sherman (Ben McKenzie) is the rookie he has been handed. The camera rides with them, handheld, usually over a shoulder, and it does not know where the trouble is coming from any more than they do. There is next to no music. Radio chatter, engine noise and shouting do the job a score would do elsewhere, and the swearing is bleeped, which sounds like a network compromise and ends up as part of the sound: you hear the shape of the word and the anger under it. Christopher Chulack, Nelson McCormick, Allison Anders and the other directors keep the light flat and the shots short, and a traffic stop at noon is more frightening here than most car chases at midnight. We were tenser through those first hours than a network cop show has any right to make us, and most of that is Cudlitz. He plays Cooper as a man who is usually right and never pleased about it, and he shows us the effort of staying patient with a partner who could get him killed. When he does lose his temper the show does not underline it. McKenzie has the face for money, which is the point, and he spends most of the first season being appraised, by Cooper, by the people on the pavement, by the camera. He holds up. Regina King’s Detective Lydia Adams is the other reason to stay. She works homicide with Russell Clarke (Tom Everett Scott), and Biderman’s writers, among them Robin Green, Mitchell Burgess, Dee Johnson and Angela Amato Velez, give her the cases that hurt. King plays her tired and exact. She is at her best in the interview rooms, where the show finally stops moving and lets her listen, and her stillness moved us more than any of the shootings did, because everyone else in the programme is in a hurry and she has decided not to be. The second programme is the detectives’ office, and you have seen it. Nate Moretta (Kevin Alejandro) and Daniel Salinger (Michael McGrady) work gang cases in scenes that would slot into any procedural of the previous twenty years, briefing, door, interrogation, and cutting between their strand and the patrol car only makes the gap obvious. Sammy Bryant (Shawn Hatosy) is given a marriage in trouble and plays it hard, but the writing gives him a wife rather than a character. Chickie Brown (Arija Bareikis) and Dewey Dudek (C. Thomas Howell) are barely there in the first season, and it takes the show a while to find a use for either. Seven episodes are not enough for nine regulars, and the second season, at six, does not help. The obvious ancestors are [*Hill Street Blues*](https://film.one/tv/hill-street-blues) and [*NYPD Blue*](https://film.one/tv/nypd-blue), which also ran a squad room’s worth of cops through overlapping cases, and the obvious rival is [*The Shield*](https://film.one/tv/the-shield), which got to the handheld camera and the sunlight first. *Southland* is less violent than *The Shield* and less interested in corruption. Its cops are mostly trying, and the series is about what the trying costs them. That is a smaller idea, and over five seasons it wears better than we expected. The narrator we never made peace with. Telling us at the top of every episode what somebody is about to learn belongs to a cornier programme, and this one is better than that. Watch the first two episodes back to back. If the car has you, the office will not put you off, and by the third season the show has worked out which of its nine cops it most wants to look at. *Fi1m score 76, published 17 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics take to Southland, and the praise clusters on its look and its people. The reviews describe a gritty, grainy police drama with a feel closer to elite cable than network television, set in a sun-bleached Los Angeles that keeps its officers on the road to burnout. The writing is called nimble and smart, and several critics note how the series introduces a broad cast of well-drawn characters without leaning on backstory. Ben McKenzie and Regina King draw the warmest notices, King’s Detective Lydia Adams in particular. The reservations are about familiarity. Variety finds the ensemble cop premise well worn even while admiring the crisp execution, and The Guardian, the one mixed voice, calls it an updated NYPD Blue that does not break new ground. The Times complains of an overstuffed, cackhanded opening episode before the drama narrows and finds its footing. Otherwise the spread is narrow: five of six reviews are firmly positive. ### Reviews we read (6) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, Randee Dawn (90/100, inferred): The critic calls the series compelling from start to finish, exciting, smart, realistic and brilliant, with nimble writing and a realistic portrayal of LA cops. It is a place fans of smart TV should want to check into every week. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-reviews/southland-tv-review-93034/) - **The AV Club**, Josh Modell (B+): The pilot makes a reasonably edgy, good-looking and smart start to a gritty police procedural on network TV. It stands out for introducing a broad cast of well-drawn characters without much backstory. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/southland-southland-1798206015) - **Variety**, Brian Lowry (80/100, inferred): The critic finds the premise a familiar ensemble cop drama but praises the crisp execution and gritty, grainy style with an elite-cable feel reminiscent of Michael Mann. Overall it delivers a cop drama with its own racing pulse. [Read](https://variety.com/2009/tv/reviews/southland-2-1200507338/) - **The Independent** (70/100, inferred): The critic describes Southland as a sun-bleached LA noir that keeps its law enforcers on the path to burnout and finds its troubled public servants more interesting than average TV cops. They single out Regina King's Detective Lydia Adams as the character they are most rooting for as the series ends. [Read](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/reviews/southland-tv-review-as-the-sunbleached-la-noir-draws-to-a-close-our-law-enforcers-are-all-well-on-the-way-to-burnout-9127097.html) - **The Times**, Andrew Billen (70/100, inferred): The review criticizes the cackhanded storytelling and overstuffed screenplay of the UK premiere episode but praises the powerful, morally ambivalent drama and compelling performances from Ben McKenzie and Regina King once the focus narrows. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/tv-radio/article/last-nights-tv-southland-3hcpbk0bgtt) - **The Guardian** (50/100, inferred): The critic notes that Southland delivers strongly on mood and style as a gritty cop show but does not break new ground, comparing it to an updated NYPD Blue. They conclude it is worth watching as something halfway decent during a slow summer TV period. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2010/jul/02/southland-homes-from-hell-review) ## Details - **Created by:** Ann Biderman - **Creator:** Ann Biderman - **Director:** Christopher Chulack, Nelson McCormick, Félix Enríquez Alcalá, Allison Anders, Guy Ferland - **Writer:** Ann Biderman, Dee Johnson, Mitchell Burgess, John Wells, Robin Green, Diana Son, Angela Amato Velez, Etan Frankel - **Producer:** John Wells - **Cast:** Ben McKenzie as Ben Sherman; Michael Cudlitz as Officer John Cooper; Regina King as Detective Lydia Adams; Shawn Hatosy as Officer Sammy Bryant; Arija Bareikis as Officer Chickie Brown; Kevin Alejandro as Detective Nate Moretta; C. Thomas Howell as Officer Dewey Dudek; Michael McGrady as Detective Daniel Salinger - **Runtime:** 42m - **Certificate (MPA):** TV-14 - **Release (the US):** 9 April 2009 - **Genres:** Drama ## Where to watch in the US - Netflix: streaming - Amazon Prime Video: add-on - The Roku Channel: add-on, hd - Amazon Prime Video: rent, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy, hd *Checked 2026-09-17.* Also available in: AE, AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HK, HR, HU, ID, IE, IL, IN, IS, IT, MX, MY, NL, NO, PA, PE, PH, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, SK, TH, TR, US, VN, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Critics' Choice Awards 2013: Best Drama Supporting Actor (won) - NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series 2013: NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series (nominated) - BET Award for Best Actor & Actress 2012: BET Award for Best Actor & Actress (nominated) - NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series 2012: NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series (won) - Peabody Awards 2012: Peabody Awards (won) - SAG Awards 2012: Outstanding Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Television Series (nominated) - Primetime Emmy Awards 2011: Outstanding Stunt Coordination (won) ## If you liked this - *The Shield* (2002): The same sun-bleached Los Angeles and handheld camera, with far worse people in the car. - *End of Watch* (2012): Two LAPD patrolmen, a dashboard camera and a shift that goes wrong; feature-length Southland. - *Homicide: Life on the Street* (1993), Fi1m 89: Baltimore detectives, interview rooms and the cost of caring; the Lydia Adams strand at length. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/homicide-life-on-the-street.md) - *Spiral* (2005): Paris police and prosecutors worn down by the job; the French answer to all of this. - *Hill Street Blues* (1981), Fi1m 86: Where the overlapping-cases precinct drama started; slower, warmer, still worth the roll call. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/hill-street-blues.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/southland