Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Homicide: Los Angeles’ On Netflix, A Dick Wolf-Produced Docuseries About L.A. County’s Most Notorious Murder Cases

As if Dick Wolf doesn’t have enough shows on linear and streaming TV, he’s been getting into the business of producing docuseries that hark back to his most famous TV series. The second season of his Netflix series Homicide definitely fits that description.

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Opening Shot: “FEBRUARY 3, 2003.” As we see the view of Phil Spector’s mansion in Alhambra, CA, we hear the famous producer’s voice cursing about being held for the death of Lana Clarkson.

The Gist: Homicide: Los Angeles is technically the second season of the Dick Wolf-produced Homicide docuseries, which focuses on the police detectives and prosecutors involved in notorious murder cases. While the first season concentrated on New York , the second season shifts its focus west, to the L.A. County Sheriff’s Office, which the opening text says is “the largest sheriff’s department in the world,” and the L.A. District Attorney’s office.

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The first case that Wolf and executive producer Jane Lipsitz examine is the Phil Spector case. Actress Lana Clarkson was reported shot to death in the foyer of Spector’s Alhambra mansion on February 3, 2003. The county sheriff’s office was called in on complicated cases by the police departments of the smaller towns in the county, and as lead homicide detective Rich Tomlin — who had no idea who Spector was at the time — states, Homicide is called in even if suicide is suspected, just to make sure homicide is ruled out.

The evidence they found, from blood spatters on Spector’s white dinner jacket to the gun at Clarkson’s side to the blood-soaked “diaper” used to wipe the fingerprints, was all circumstantial. It took a few months for the DA’s office, who was still smarting from losing high-profile celebrity cases like OJ Simpson’s murder trial, to file murder charges against Spector. Both the sheriff’s and DA’s office wanted to build a case around Spector’s character, and the fact that he held multiple women at gunpoint when they wouldn’t give him what he wanted.

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Through archival footage and interviews with Clarkson’s mother, friends, lead prosecutor Alan Jackson, and a number of L.A. County Sheriff’s office homicide detectives, the episode goes through the investigation, Spector’s attorneys successful attempts at getting the trial delayed for years, the first trial’s hung jury, and the second trial, where he was finally convicted of second-degree murder.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Like we mentioned, this is the second season of the Homicide docuseries, but given the fact that the people being interviewed are the police and prosecutors, it’s easy to say that the show is a real-life Law & Order .

Our Take: The idea with the Homicide docuseries is to make sure that the police and district attorneys who work on the cases are shown as real people, ones who emotionally invest in their cases, care about the outcomes, and admit when the job takes a toll on them. The other notion is that there will be some people that the producers of the series interview that will be involved in more than one case, just to show how capable these cops and prosecutors are.

A good example is Mark Lillienfeld, a retired LASD homicide detective who figures prominently in the first two episodes (the second episode is about the murder of race car driver Mickey Thompson and his wife. Given that the Thompson murders and Clarkson’s murder took place 15 years apart, it’s interesting to hear about how Lillienfeld worked the cases at different junctures of his career.

It was interesting to hear Jackson’s reaction to the hung jury in Spector’s first trial, the doubts that crept into his mind during the extended deliberations, and his office’s determination to lay out the case the same way again in the second trial, hoping that a new group of jurors will provide a different result, which they did.

It was also interesting to hear about how these cases take a toll on the detectives who work them, with one of the ones who worked the Clarkson/Spector case talking about how he just reached the “number of bodies” that was his limit.

Will the show talk about both sides of the case? Nope. That’s not what Wolf and company are after with Homicide . So if you’re expecting anything but a literal “law and order” view of the cases and how they went down, you’re going to have to look elsewhere.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: The discussion about police detective PTSD transitions to information about episode 2, about the Thompson murders in 1988.

Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to Rob Fabroni, who knew both Phil Spector and Lana Clarkson, so he had perspective on how unstable Spector was and how the idea that Clarkson was a depressed hack actress, which is what Spector’s attorneys painted her as, was just not true.

Most Pilot-y Line: The second trial got shortchanged in this narrative, probably because the prosecution’s case was the same. It would have been interesting to see if the defense changed anything from one trial to the next.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Homicide: Los Angeles works if you’re interested in hearing from the police detectives and prosecutors that investigated the cases being profiled. But you certainly won’t get a well-rounded picture of each case.

Joel Keller ( @joelkeller ) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com , VanityFair.com , Fast Company and elsewhere.

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