Jesse Stone (My rating: 4+)
Tom Selleck nails the role and for this can be forgiven the commercials he does
As I’ve mentioned before, I generally shy away from U.S. police and detective shows. They tend to be too violent and express the American deadly fascination with guns. The NCIS, CSI and FBI shows are so far from the real thing as to be even worse than caricatures. In real life, most crimes and murders don’t get solved and never within an episode. (Of course, this includes some British shows, including the thoroughly enjoyable Vera.) The Law and Order group were somewhat better and I liked Law & Order: Criminal Intent with Vincent D'Onofrio. (D'Onofrio played a moody but brilliant and insightful detective and was hard not to watch.) But the only American cop show I really enjoyed were the nine Jesse Stone films based on the work of Robert B. Parker. (The first eight on CBS and the ninth on the Hallmark Channel.) Tom Selleck played the lead role of a small town police chief with great – and sometimes overplayed – earnestness and his own moral code. Smart but with demons, including alcohol. Selleck nailed the role and for this can be forgiven for any of the commercials he has done. (I vaguely remember Selleck from Magnum P.I. and have not watched him in Blue Bloods.)
Stone serves in the small fictional Massachusetts seaside town of Paradise (filmed, I believe, in the lovely town of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia). A former baseball player, and fired LAPD detective with a drinking problem, he is hired as the chief of a three person department in a town with hidden secrets. The corrupt mayor expects him to be a puppy as it’s a last chance job, but Chief Stone doesn’t like crime or criminals. He does sometimes use a gun but eschews needless violence. Stone has his ups and downs, dealing with a divorce and continued flirtations with drinking too much. At one point he does his job so well that he is fired, though he later gets it back under dramatic circumstances. Stone sees a shrink who is also an ex-cop (played convincingly by William Devane), works occasionally for the head of the Massachusetts State Police Homicide Division and sometimes gets help from a local crime boss. Stone’s office includes Officer Luther "Suitcase" Simpson (played by the excellent Kohl Sudduth) who frequently notes that “the information's out there. All you have to do is let it in.”
Each of the nine films has a subplot or two and the way Stone works everything out with kindness, concern, smarts and the minimum violence necessary is good watching. A solid 4+. (Some are available free via Internet search and also on Amazon Prime.)