Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent

There’s a Law & Order series based in Toronto 🤨.

Overview

I started watching this show because i recognized Aden Young in a trailer. This is a terrific actor that I hope one day will get the breakthrough he deserves.

This is a great show, although the name is somewhat of a mouthful. And to be honest, the show is good on its own, I don’t think it needs the Law & Order package and the somewhat cheesy intro.

The pros

• excellent photography. Like, really really good.
• great soundtrack
• the main characters have a refreshing chemistry, not the buddy-buddy type, but the “we’re getting along fine” type, which adds a dose of realism
• the plots are reasonably interesting and fit well in the format
• they really nailed the Toronto vibe

The cons

• change the title please
• the cast is diverse (which I have conflicting views about) but it’s not Toronto diverse
• I could be wrong but it feels like we’re seeing some of the same secondary locations in multiple episodes
• there’s a door buzzer of some kind in the main room with the crime boards and once you start hearing it, you can’t stop hearing it
• the writing often feels American English, not Canadian (ex: garage instead of parkade)
• the whole purpose of Inspector Holness seems to be stating the obvious and taking the slowest members of the audience to the same page as everyone else

About the cast

Toronto is roughly 45% white, 45% Asian, and the remaining 10% includes Black, Latin American, and Aboriginals. This is a very unique distribution of ethnicities, very specific to Toronto. Anyone who lives there or has been there will agree, the Indian and Pakistani population is very central to the fabric of Toronto society. And I’m not talking about a sudden bubble of refugees; the Indian and Pakistani people have been there for a long time, and they are an integral part of every social layer. They are not an afterthought or a detail.

And yet what do we see in the main cast of this show? Two white cops, one Black female, and one Black male. It’s not convincing, it looks fake.

There could be so much interesting dynamics if there were, for instance, one Indian and one Pakistani in the prosecutor office; opposing cultures forced to coexist. Or a Sikh and a Hindu. Or a Chinese and a Taiwanese. There’s such a great mosaic of cultures in Toronto, why not tap into that and make the show more Canadian?

Still, don’t take Aden Young out.