The second season of A&E‘s Homicide Squad: New Orleans is picking up where Season 1 of the true crime show left off, in both good and bad ways. Fans get to enjoy more time with the New Orleans homicide unit, but the series still doesn’t quite understand what makes the true crime genre work.
Homicide Squad: New Orleans is produced by Wolf Entertainment—the folks behind the One Chicago and FBI franchises—and in Season 2, it still behaves very much like a scripted show. The content is obviously not scripted, but the way it’s presented is more like a procedural than true crime. There’s a lot of telling the audience instead of showing them what’s happening: on-screen text is used too frequently, and the detectives are asked to serve as narrators, explaining the story when viewers should just be experiencing it.
Therein lies the problem: homicide detectives are not usually great storytellers. They tell stories through evidence, not by speaking into a camera. Some law enforcement officers are better at this than others; the Tulsa homicide team on The First 48 are all very personable and well-spoken. But The First 48 also isn’t putting them on the spot; the camera is much better integrated into the series. That’s what Homicide Squad: New Orleans needs to figure out. It can’t simply roll film and make a story out of it; the series must adapt to its surroundings.
The notable exception is Sergeant Rob Barrere, whom A&E viewers will know from the years New Orleans was featured on The First 48. Because of that, Barrere is used to operating with a camera in front of him, and he’s engaging. The rest of the unit is noticeably (and understandably) more awkward, and there’s not any one of them that is a breakout personality in the way that The First 48 endeared viewers to so many detectives across different departments. It’s worth noting that the homicide unit has had significant turnover since it was on the prior show (for instance, Ryan Vaught, who played so well off Barrere, has been gone for a while), but the current squad doesn’t yet have a distinctive voice.
The cases remain interesting enough—the third episode is a pretty solid study in cooperation between different departments, even if most of it happens over the phone—but the producers can do much more to put the audience in the moment and not make them feel like they’re just following along. Homicide Squad: New Orleans Season 2 has yet to answer the question of why the NOPD homicide unit deserves its own dedicated show. With a few creative tweaks, it could dig deeper and find something special. But for now, it’s a true crime show that hasn’t found its own truth.
Homicide Squad: New Orleans airs Thursdays at 9:00 p.m. on A&E. Photo Credit: Courtesy of A&E.
