The detective has been a staple of television since the beginning. We have witnessed a stunning variety of the detective over the years ranging from the hard boiled tough guy, through the smooth-talking ladies’ man and more. The hardest part about making this particular list was not finding enough people to put on it, but deciding who would actually make it. The television detectives who are on this list are ones that have in some way blazed a new path for their archetype.
10. Rick Hunter (Hunter)
The quintessential tough guy action hero of the eighties, Rick Hunter (played by Fred Dryer) was what so many men wished they could be. Tough-talking, hard-hitting and heroic, Rick Hunter crashed cars, shot guns and caused things to explode every week. Not only was the show full of action, but it was also full of the bad guys getting what they deserved. In the real world a cop like Rick Hunter would have never made the force much less detective, but he was great television.
9. Jessica Fletcher (Murder She Wrote)
Jessica Fletcher (portrayed by Angela Lansbury) may have looked like she would be more at home baking pies in the kitchen then at a crime scene but she proved to us week in and week out that appearances can be deceiving. Jessica Fletcher was the mystery writer turned detective decades before Castle was conceived and somehow brought a feel-good element to the murder-mystery genre. While there may be more hard-hitting detectives than Fletcher, she brought a very unique spin to television.
8. Phillip Columbo (Columbo)
Phillip Columbo or was the first real quirky detective. Years before Adrian Monk, Columbo charmed television viewers with his absent-minded manner of being combined with a surprisingly sharp mind. Each week this television detective would convince the bad guys (and often the audience as well) that he was clueless and would never figure out who did it. However every week Columbo proved he was a very capable sleuth and always managed to catch the bad guy.
7. Vick Mackey (The Shield)
The change in character that Michael Chiklis made in between his work as Toni Scalli in The Commish over to Vick Mackey in The Shield might be one of the greatest feats of acting in American television history. Chiklis managed to make the transition of playing a mild-mannered, by-the-book police commissioner (Tony Scalli) to one of the most fascinating antihero detectives of all time. What made Vic Mackey unique in the television detective genre was that he was a corrupt and villainous character that you found yourself rooting for every week.
6. Thomas Magnum (Magnum P.I.)
Tom Selleck made his name, and type-cast himself because of it, as the cool beach bum turned private detective in the seminal 80’s detective show Magnum P.I. His combination of good looks and street smarts enthralled viewers every week as he tackled problems that for whatever reason the police couldn’t. What made Magnum special and earned him a place on this list was his laid-back style and charm, which was a nice break from the hard-boiled tough guy routine of many TV detectives before him.
5. Fox Mulder (The X-Files)
X-Files was a show for the conspiracy theorist in all of us. Whether it was aliens or government cover- ups we watched as Fox Mulder (portrayed brilliantly by David Duchovny) chased down bad guys ripped straight out of pulp fiction and slowly convinced us all that there was more to this world than met the eye. While there have been many shows that have tried to duplicate the X-Files, none have been nearly as good and the main reason for that is because none of them have Fox Mulder leading the charge.
4. Olivia Benson (Law & Order: SVU)
The Law & Order franchise has produced some very memorable television detectives and this list could have easily been filled with all of them. However, Detective Benson stands out among all of them because she has come to symbolize so much of what a detective that deals with sex offenders should be. Tough, compassionate, and dedicated are all qualities that someone working heinous crimes needs and Detective Benson has them in spades without shoving it in your face. The world could honestly use more people like Detective Olivia Benson.
3. Debra Morgan (Dexter)
There is something refreshing about a female character that acts and talks like a man but still maintains her femininity. Debra Morgan (portrayed by Jennifer Carpenter) is a foul-mouthed, ambitious young woman who has busted her hump since day one in Miami Metro and been rewarded by promotion after promotion. While she doesn’t win many friends because of her abrasiveness, she more than makes up for this in her dogged determination to find the bad guy and her stalwart beliefs in right and wrong. While she is far from perfect, there is no one I would rather have tracking down a killer.
2. Gil Grissom (C.S.I.)
Gil Grissom made being a science geek not only cool, but exciting as well. Grissom (portrayed by William Peterson) was the night shift supervisor for the Las Vegas P.D.’s C.S.I. unit and used hard science (combined with cool special effects) to bust the bad guys. While most of what you see him do is far-fetched, it did give us an idea of just how important the science behind the police work is. In a genre inundated with tough guy types, a character that used his brain more than brawn was a very refreshing change.
1. Joe Friday (Dragnet)
Joe Friday may not have been the very first television detective, but he was one of the first, and set the bar for American audiences on what to expect from a detective. Times have definitely changed since Joe Friday first graced the radio waves and small screens but his belief in justice, right and wrong, and catching the bad guy still runs deep in every good TV detective. It may be true that we would have the detective genre without Joe Friday, but it is likely the landscape would be a lot different without him. While he may not have been the most exciting detective, the reason he tops this list is quite simple, there is a little bit of Joe Friday in every one of the other people on this list.
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