Cop Rock has become a sort of campfire legend among TV nerds, accessible only to those lucky enough to catch a furtive late-night showing on some godforsaken channel on the outskirts of cable TV, or morally ambivalent enough to resort to the sort of extralegal means that might make a perpetrator break out into a lusty sea shanty on the show.
By all accounts, though, it’s worth the effort: Widely panned as one of the worst TV series of all time, Stephen Bochco’s wildly ill-conceived blend of the cop-show and pop-musical genres is nevertheless fascinating, if only as an example of what not to do. “Holy fucking Jesus Christ on a cracker does it ever [live up to its reputation],” says our own Nathan Rabin. And how could it not? It’s got a musical number about selling babies!: