Call the cops

Criminal Minds and Thief prove that America is the most paranoid nation on Earth. And what do we have? Heartbeat, Miss Marple and some old gits in New Tricks

Robert Oxton Bolton wrote: "A belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses, it is an idea that possesses the mind." I learnt this, not studying philosophy or literature at Harvard or Oxford, or listening to Melvyn Bragg on Radio 4. No, I learnt it from watching Criminal Minds, LivingTV's current, classic cop show. How great is that?

Minds is, broadly, a fairly generic profilers'n'cops series in the same vein as Without A Trace, The Inside, Cold Case and (many hundred) others. It is set, ostensibly, in Quantico, which as we all know (from watching the above shows) is the FBI's HQ in Washington. It deals (in often fabulously unpleasant detail) with cases of child abduction, stalking, rape and, of course, murder, which, in American cop shows these days, is fairly tame. The phenomenal success of all these shows confirms America's status as the most paranoid nation on Earth.

Inevitably, the team of cops in Criminal Minds comprises one black guy, one nerdy genius, a couple of hot chicks in tight T-shirts and Armani suits and a handful of handsome hunky guys. Their world-weary, war-torn leader is Agent Jason Gideon, played by the excitingly named Mandy Patinkin (insert your own "Mandy" joke here). Gideon it is who delivers the famous/obscure quotations such as the one by Robert Oxton Bolt in a doom-laden, non-committal voiceover, like the voice of God.

I'm not sure if they all work.

James Hieronymous Shelley wrote: "I love this sick cop show shit but American detectives trying to sound deep by referencing lines of poetry usually end up sounding like pretentious music journalists."

"Robert Oxton Bolton" is for instance actually plain old Robert Bolt - the Man For All Seasons.

Gideon: "The French poet Jacques Rigaut said: 'Don't forget that I cannot see myself. But my role is limited to being the one who looks in the mirror'."

Mmm. Thanks for that, Gideon. Very interesting.

But the rest of Criminal Minds is so slick, so juicy and (in the case of the recent episode about a Stepfather-style sicko who began an abduction by spending the night sleeping in his victims' beds while they slept) gloriously gratuitous.

The quotations become the icing on the cake, although I could do without Gideon's pronunciation of Nietzsche as "Neech-ee" and Faulkner as "Fuckner". So far, the likes of Shakespeare, Conrad and Ionescu have predominated. We also know that one of the writers received a copy of The Collected Works Of Euripides for Christmas (he is now regurgitating it).

Most of Gideon's declarations ("Emerson said: 'All is riddle. And the key to a riddle is another riddle'") really don't have anything to do with the case he's working on or anything at all. It's actually almost disappointing when there is a vague connection with something criminal. These lines tend to be of the No Shit variety that could only appear deep to Americans - quotations like, "Carl Jung said: 'The healthy man does not torture others. Generally, it is the tortured who turn into torturers'."

In this Friday's episode, Agent Elle Greenaway (pouting superfox Lola Glaudini) is among a bunch of hostages held at gunpoint by Frank Sabotka from The Wire. I'd like to think Euripides would love it.

Shakespeare, Homer (the ancient one not the yellow contemporary one), Conrad, Dostoevsky and, for all I know, Euripides would probably recognise elements of Thief, which is basically a cop show with a gang of criminals but no cops. There is one cop (Michael Rooker from Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer) but he's a baddie (bent cop Izzy Driscoll) while the chief criminal, safe-breaker Nick Atwater (Andre Braugher from Homicide: Life On The Street), is the series' hero.

Thief is great material - fierce, fraught, human, very 1970s. It's like watching Michael Mann, or 1970s Scorsese and Cassavetes in TV form. With excellent music and photography, it's so stylised you can forget Thief also is ram-jammed with real substance. Thief is a great title, though it might as well be called Grief. So far, Atwater has lost his wife (in a car crash), his best friend (his fence - tortured and murdered) and one of his crew (shot by Atwater). On top of this, the Chinese mafia are trying to kill him and his step-daughter hates him - thus jeopardising his plan to hijack $40m of illicit government "aid" to Columbia. Apparently, in episode three it really gets going.

Sleeper Cell - in which an undercover cop who looks like one of the Roots infiltrates an LA gang of Muslim terrorists - confirms how paranoid America really is: one of the gang is, ostensibly, a blond, all-American jock. In episode one, they stoned a man to death - one of their own gang. So for a bunch of pretty boys, they ain't playing. Their main plain is to anthrax a shopping mall in downtown LA. So, again, sometimes, it's hard to remember whose side you're meant to be on.

And what of our British cop shows you might ask? Well, besides a recent quartet of Poirot and a Miss Marple, Heartbeat's back. And people say Britain's stuck in the past.

New Tricks is based around an "Unsolved Crimes Squad". In the States, in Cold Case, this means Detective Lily Rush - one of those blonde, anorexic cops in tight sweaters in the same vein as Eames in Law & Order: Criminal Intent and Special Agent Rebecca Locke in The Inside. And who do we get ? Three grumpy, grizzled old gits who make David Jason in A Touch Of Frost look dynamic and plausible, namely James Bolam, Alun Armstrong and Dennis Waterman as three retired policemen investigating old cases seemingly for superintendent Amanda Redman's own personal amusement. Quite why or how three retired/senile old cops can investigate unsolved cases, I have no idea. As Waterman cheered in one scene, accepting a glass of wine, "How can I be on duty ? I'm not a policeman any more!"

New Tricks is genial, gentle fare - like a Hovis advert with crime. One recent episode even had cameos by Frances de la Tour and Richard Briers confirming the rule that requires a famous name in a small role always turns out to be the culprit. In the episode concerned, a serial killer in south London from the 1970s had started killing again.

"The pattern of the killings had all the markings of a psychopath," Redman briefed the Old Gits. "The only difference in the victims was, they were all ... dogs."

It has to be said, this is quite a big difference. Better than, say, children. One of the squad (Armstrong) spent half the episode (titled Old Dogs. Do you see what they've done there?) in tears.

It's hard to imagine Gideon, Robert Goren or Horatio Caine giving a shit about dogs in the same way or at all. Who would have thought it, eh? Last of the Summer Cops.

· New Tricks, Mon, 9pm, BBC1 Sleeper Cell, Tue, 10pm, FX Thief, Tue, 10pm, Sky One Criminal Minds, Fri, 9pm, LivingTV. Jim Shelley is TV critic of the Daily Mirror