Holiday Gift Guide 2009

"Good cop and bad cop left for the day," Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) tells a mug he's about to, ahem, creatively interrogate in the pilot of this drama. "I'm a different kind of cop." Over seven seasons, The Shield followed the effective but corrupt Mackey and his élite Strike Team in a rough section of L.A., where they nabbed heinous criminals but played their own cat-and-mouse games with internal investigators on the trail of their graft and brutality. With fantastic support from C.C.H. Pounder and guests including Glenn Close and Forest Whitaker, Chiklis constantly complicated our picture of Mackey, who was at once amorally self-protecting and dedicated to protecting his family and the public, forcing viewers to ask if our safety was worth his methods. High-speed and unflinching, The Shield was TV at its most arresting. — James Poniewozik
Price: $107.99 at Amazon