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What 'The Shield' Taught Basic Cable

NPR | By Andrew Wallenstein
Published September 2, 2008 at 11:00 AM MDT

It's time to bid farewell to one of TV's most under-appreciated series, the FX program The Shield. When this gritty cop drama began in 2002, it was groundbreaking in more ways than one. Never before had a cable channel outside of HBO tried a high-quality scripted series.

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Andrew Wallenstein
Andrew Wallenstein is the television critic for NPR's Day to Day. He is also an editor at The Hollywood Reporter, where he covers television and digital media out of Los Angeles. Wallenstein is also the co-host of the weekly TV Guide Channel series Square Off. His essay on Holocaust films was published in Best Jewish Writing 2003 (Jossey-Bass), and he has also written for The New York Times, The Boston Globe and Business Week. He has a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University.
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