Southland - NBC's new cop drama

I love this show. Cop drama following the lives of beat cops and detectives in lapd. It's got a catchy well-lit noir intro, features a quick glimpse of something that happens in the future, and then the show moves from past-present and onwards thereafter. I saw an episode on Hulu.com last week and now I'm hooked. I'm in the middle of an episode now, unforutnetly Hulu only features the most recent 5 episodes so I haven't seen the first and second episodes. 

Funny thing is that I don't even like "cop dramas". Nope. I never got into NYPD Blue, CSI Miami, Law and Order: Whichever. Barney Miller was before my time, but I'll get around to it since the namesake character was featured in a "top 100 characters of all time" on either Bravo or E!... whoops I can't remember which network...

The closest things to cop drama's I ever got into as a youngster were Quincy and Rockford Files, neither of the guys were cops. Southland is great because it basks in a background radiation of gritty LA life: gang bangers, drug dealers, rapists, so forth. However, it's the foreground we're all after - it strives for in depth character development. It's serial not episodic, which is something that turns me off of most crime drama's and their mindless money-making spin-offs. Oh and of course being about cops and taking place in LA there are a few sub-story-arcs or sub-plots about racial and socio-economic divides.

So when is Oakland going to get a successful police drama franchise on Network TV?