Linen suits. Boat shoes. Speedboats. Neon. Welcome to the explosively pastel world of Miami Vice, the cop show that took the 80s by storm. If it seems cheesy and parodic now, that’s because it spawned countless copycats that eschewed the formulaic cop procedural in favour of something cooler. Cops on TV weren’t cool before Miami Vice. They were hard-working stiffs in tatty suits. They had IBS and eyes like belt holes. There wasn’t a chiselled jawline in sight.
Miami Vice was sexy as hell. It ran for five seasons, and was set on the streets of Miami, a place of stucco walls, powdery colours, bikini-clad women and drugs. Lots of drugs. Rife with cartels and gang violence, this iteration of Miami has a crime problem, a problem dealt with by a squad of police officers whose job it is to stem the tide – all the while looking effortlessly cool.
Don Johnson brought an exhausted, rugged charm to the role of Det James “Sonny” Crockett throughout the show’s tenure. Imagine Mel Gibson’s Martin Riggs from Lethal Weapon crossed with a young Jack Nicholson – unshaven, slightly manic, underslept, with the moralistic, beating heart of a family man lying dormant beneath his calcified exterior. Sonny’s interactions with his superiors seem almost laughably cliched until you realise that up to this point, people hadn’t seen police on TV talking back, threatening to turn in their badge, or being called “mavericks” and “lone wolves” every other week. Sonny is the patient zero of loose cannons.
His offsider? Det Ricardo Tubbs (played by Philip Michael Thomas), who travels down to Miami from his beat in New York in the pilot. Tubbs is hot on the heels of the big bad Calderone, a Colombian cartel bigwig. It turns out that Tubbs is the perfect yin to Crockett’s yang: smooth, likable, wary, relatable. Once their interests align, the show settles into a gallop, propelling us, and our heroes, deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole of the war against drugs, prostitution and gambling.
What is it that makes the increasingly grim and uphill battles of Crockett and Tubbs so electrifyingly watchable? The tone. There’s a distinct visual language to Miami Vice, informed in large part by the executive producer (for the first four seasons) Michael Mann, the brains behind Heat, Collateral and Thief. A creative whose storytelling seems to focus solely on tortured, complex men, philosophically spelunking the depths of masculinity between sporadic bouts of gunfire. Mann’s fingerprints are all over Miami Vice. His work always has a palpable sense of place and, good lord, does Miami Vice have a sense of place.
In part, this is down to the decision to shoot almost entirely on location. This sent the budget of the show skyrocketing but the results were worth it – every episode is a trip back in time. Whether we’re following Crockett and Tubbs into seedy clubs, their crowded police station, or Crockett’s Ferrari with the top down, it’s all real. No sound stages here; by and large, Miami Vice is a gritty, seedy, boots-on-the-ground portrayal of the city in the 80s.
Over Miami Vice’s five seasons, several things happened. First, the show proved it was capable of character development, having Crockett and Tubbs (and the rest of the ensemble cast) become more jaded, more seasoned and more willing to bend the rules to get the job done. It also introduced recurring villains: big-bads who reared their heads in ambitious two-part barn-burners. There was a real sense of continuity, even when the showrunners largely jumped ship and handed the reins over for the fifth and final season.
But Miami Vice also took risks. Sure, they didn’t always pay off – the show was at times brutally unsubtle and devoid of irony and James Brown even played an alien abductee of sorts at one point (the less said about that the better) – but at least the show refused to play it safe. Just like Crockett and Tubbs, who broke the rules, made their mark and looked incredible while doing so. That’s Miami Vice to a T.
Miami Vice is available to stream on Apple TV in Australia, Prime Video in the UK and NBC in the US. For more recommendations of what to stream in Australia, click here
