R.I.P. John Langley, creator of Cops and "godfather of reality TV"
The TV producer reportedly had a heart attack during an off-road race
TV News COPS![R.I.P. John Langley, creator of Cops and "godfather of reality TV"](https://img.pastemagazine.com/wp-content/avuploads/2021/06/15031358/921f9ea72911193ddd75cf2d32ac0d76.jpg)
As reported by Variety, TV writer and producer John Langley—whose biggest contribution to culture, for better or worse, was creating the TV show Cops—has died. Langley apparently suffered a heart attack in Mexico while competing as part of the Coast To Coast Ensenada-San Felipe 250 off-road race. He was 78.
Langley’s TV legacy is obviously prickly, given what Cops became and what it started to represent, but that’s not quite what his vision for the series was. Variety quotes a TV Academy interview he gave in 2009 in which he noted that, as “a kid of the ‘60s,” he’s “sort of anti-authoritarian by nature” and that if you had told him ahead of time that he would create a TV show about cops, he would’ve guessed that it’d be called Pigs. Rather than an attempt to glorify police work or to make officers look like infallible extensions of the powerful arm of justice, the original idea was that Cops was simply an unfiltered look into the machinery of the police system—that’s why it didn’t have a narrator or reenactments telling the viewer how to feel. (As opposed to more recent competitor Live PD, which turned into the biggest show in the world by becoming the absolute worst version of what Cops could’ve been.)
But, of course, whatever Langley had in mind for Cops when it premiered, it quickly became its own thing… and that thing was glorifying police officers and making them look like infallible extensions of the arm of justice. Critics accused the show of forcing people into signing waivers, and police departments successfully fought to have negative footage eradicated, and the show eventually got booted from the increasingly respectable Fox network onto Spike TV and then the Paramount Network. Cops was canceled last summer in the wake of the nationwide protests against police violence prompted by the murder of George Floyd, though Paramount immediately distanced itself so far from the series that it basically wouldn’t even admit to having ever aired it.
That all being said, Langley and Cops did have a big impact on TV outside of copaganda. The show’s cinéma vérité style became a cliché for news broadcasts and it popularized a style of reality TV that was less about telling a story, documentary-style, and more about just putting a camera in front of some people and watching what happened—whether or not the things that happened were actually real or if they had been orchestrated by the people behind the camera, which would also be tied to the Cops legacy. Because of this, he’s considered the “godfather of reality TV.”
Beyond Cops, Langley worked on Jail, Vegas Strip, Antoine Fuqua’s Brooklyn’s Finest, American Expose: Who Murdered JFK?, and Terrorism: Target USA. Langley is survived by his wife and four children.
34 Comments
He’s producing garbage television in heaven now… *sheds tear*
He’s coercing angels to sign release forms now. *harp sounds*
They have shirtless angels in Heaven? *yee-haw*
Johm Langley dead? Eh, whatcha gonna do?
I’m sure this is what we all came here to say.
Dead boys, dead boys what ya gonna do?
What ya gonna when they come for you?
> if you had told him ahead of time that he would create a TV show about cops, he would’ve guessed that it’d be called Pigs.Money changes everyone
Unfunny
He didn’t just pioneer reality TV trash. He also pioneered reality VHS and DVD trash, trademarking the term, “TOO HOT FOR TV!” RIP
damn this guy sucks
But without that, we’d have never gotten this: https://www.theonion.com/c-span-releases-too-hot-for-c-span-video-1819564603
Anyone interested in the story behind COPS – and the real damage it and Live PD have wrought not only on communities but specific individuals – should check out Dan Taberski’s excellent podcast Running from COPS: https://www.topic.com/runningfromcops
Missing Richard Simmons was fun but left me feeling weird. I can’t believe that Dan Taberski then went on to create three of the best podcasts of the last decade.
The ethics of Missing Richard Simmons are icky at best. On principle alone I refused to listen to it. I then stumbled on Running from Cops and after I was already enjoying it discovered it was by the same guy. I ultimately did listen to Missing Richard Simmons and I did enjoy it. I also felt kind of guilty for enjoying it.
Yeah. I ended up feeling that it was a serious invasion of RS’s privacy and I regretted listening after it was over.
Good fucking dead. Fuck him and fuck his ilk. Shit birds.
Title should be “So…that guy that created COPS died.” Or even better, not say anything.
I love how they remember him as being all radical in the ‘60s, like all of the conservative baby boomers who immediately sold out and tossed all those ideals to the wayside in the 80s.
“BUT THE DRUGS WEREN’T AS STRONG BACK IN THE 60S!”
Money can make you forget your morals pretty quick.
Going out on a limb here, but I’m betting most of the conservative Boomers in the 80’s probably weren’t the same Boomers who were protesting Nam or getting all hippie dippie in the 60’s.
Alternate headline “Millionaire copaganda pioneer dies not a moment too soon”
Geez, Sam, I know you’re a hack, but you’re word-for-wording a significant portion of the Variety article without quotes. You just rearranged it. Who is the senior editor of this site at this point?
editor?Herb got rid of those guys years ago.
lmao my dude they dont even have copy editors
Ah well, at least we got one good thing out his bullshit show:
And Reno 911
And Cop Rock
and the X-Files Cops episode.
And Ronnie Dobbs.
I love that I have not had cable in over 15 years, simply because I had no idea some asshole show called Live PD has ever existed.
Same. the last time I watched actual TV was when I was in the hospital. Turned it on, flipped through the channels, didn’t find anything worth watching, went back to reading an ebook on my phone.
I can live quite well without TV now.
I have a feeling he may be a bit warm for his contributions to society.
Good fucking riddance.