People love cop shows. That is why so many networks have thrown their money towards a bunch of cop shows that are slightly different takes on the first few. Some are successful reinventions of the basic cop shows concept while others are tired retreads or failed innovations. Just so you know which ones to avoid, here are the 5 worst cop shows on television.

In Plain Sight

This show has a nice premise. It is centered around federal marshals whose job it is to protect individuals who are being ushered into the witness protection program. So far it sounds like a workable variation on the many other cop show out there. But it’s not.

It is not for lack of trying though. The lead character is a strong female with sex appeal, always a character with mass appeal. Unfortunately, the show feels like a repeat of shows that came before it. The situations are like old episodes of classic episodes with new character names. There are good intentions afoot here but not enough originality to make it work.

Psych

Psych is a show that is based on a psychic, or rather a guy with good observational skills pretending to be a psychic. And this pretend psychic has an agency called Psych through which he helps clients and the police solve cases. There’s the premise.

The show is filled with jokes and movie references (particularly from the 80′s) and these jokes, depending on your sense of humor, are actually funny. So where does this show go wrong? It’s not much of a cop show. It is a forum for slapstick comedy and clever bickering. All in all if you want a good cop show, look elsewhere. If you just want to laugh then watch Psych.

Lie To Me

The premise of this one is simple. The main character can tell when a person is lying. That’s easy enough.

The rest of the show is not great. It follows the basic plotlines that so many cop shows have before which makes it predictable to the point of being dull. You could easily get the feeling that you have seen this before and you may have changed the channel that time too.

Castle

This is yet another cop show that follows the well-trodden path before it almost without deviation. This is a shame. There are the occasional nuggets of humor that attempt to lift this show above its place in the land of painful mediocrity but they just cannot manage to counteract everything else.

Fringe

This show attempts to cross a cop show with the currently popular paranormal angle. It feels a bit forced as though it were created to gain an audience and not to be a quality show in its own right.

These are the 5 worst cop shows on television. Some are mediocre, some are only borderline in the cop show genre, and others are just bad. If you want shows that really focus on cops then you can do much better than these.

Maryellen Ward writes about how to find the best forensic science colleges.