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!:
And soon you’ll be able to watch shady dudes in Members Only jackets croon about human trafficking in (relatively) crystal-clear DVD quality, as this coming May, Cop Rock will receive its first ever home-video release courtesy of Shout! Factory. No Blu-ray release is planned, sadly, but the set will include new interviews with Bochco, star Anne Bobby, and the ever-mysterious “more,” a special feature with the potential to rival John Boorman’s Zardoz commentary track as the most defensive DVD extra of all time.
Cop Rock will be released on May 17, and we wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to you before then, so, please, let’s be careful out there.