And, of course, you can't have a cop show without a central lead character (or duo). Over the years, TV cops have appeared in an almost limitless variety of guises – and still they keep coming.

Here is our highly personal and idiosyncratic pick of the best law enforcers ever to grace our small screens.

Horatio Caine (played by David Caruso)
CSI: Miami

Was there ever a TV cop who could deliver with such conviction lines so cheesy they should come with a side of crackers? Or put on a pair of sunglasses with such intent? Horatio was either the coolest cop ever or TV Copdom's biggest dag. You decide.

 

Jim Carver (Mark Wingett)
The Bill

Life was never simple for big, bluff boozehound Jim Carver in the more than 20 years that he graced Sun Hill. Played with a beautifully dissolute vulnerability by Mark Wingett, even when he got off the turps he became a slave to the punt, forcing June Ackland to come to the rescue.

 

Tom Croydon (John Wood)
Blue Heelers

The very epitome of old-fashioned policing, Tom Croydon was the rock upon which the Mount Thomas cop shop was built. With a gig in pretty much every episode, much of the action revolved around Tom's no-nonsense yet emotionally smart presence and his increasingly tortured personal life.

 

George Dixon (Jack Warner)
Dixon of Dock Green

Evenin', all. George Dixon was the face of an era of British policing that is now long gone, if it ever really existed at all - when the bobby on the beat was a cheerful figure on a bicycle who knew everyone on his patch and sorted out any unpleasantness with unfailing good sense and good humour.

 

Columbo (Peter Falk)
Columbo

Each episode of Columbo unfolded to a tried and tested formula. First there was the crime, then Columbo would shamble on to the scene to be fatally underestimated by the crook before eventually getting his man (or woman). "One more thing ..." he would say before skewering the hapless miscreant. Brilliant.

 

David Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser)
Starsky and Hutch

Everyone had their favourite out of this odd-couple pairing, but for me Starsky always edged it ahead of his partner. Maybe it was the red Gran Torino, or the extravagant knitwear, but for whatever reason I was Starsky when we ran around the backyard re-enacting scenes from the show.

 

Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen)
Police Squad!

The star of the short-lived Police Squad!, which spawned the Naked Gun movies, Drebin was unremittingly silly and a great antidote to all the testosterone-fuelled cop shows of the era that took themselves just a little too seriously.

 

Morse (John Thaw)
Inspector Morse

With a presence that made women of a certain age go weak at the knees, Morse was a different type of detective. Where many of his colleagues relied on bumptiousness and bravado, here was an opera-loving, vintage-car driving intellectual who nailed the bad guys by thinking about things - a lot.

 

Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West)
The Wire

McNulty is in the classic maverick-detective mould and tries to do the right thing, guided by his own moral compass, which generally points him in the right direction. With a personal life that would make an NRL player blush, McNulty is one of the standouts in the cast of this classic HBO drama.

Jane Tennison (Helen Mirren)
Prime Suspect

Helen Mirren's startlingly honest portrayal of a senior woman detective and the personal and institutional hurdles she faces makes her one of the best TV cops of the modern era. Dogged yet flawed (booze, again), tough yet plausibly vulnerable, it's a tour de force from Mirren, especially in the earlier series of the show.