The new season of The First 48 is more than a new season. Season 30 is a milestone. It’s also the first season since A&E pulled the show’s camera crews out of the field in March. And it’s the first with the network’s new First 48 podcast. There’s a lot going on, but in the middle of all that, this is still TV’s best true crime series.
The Season 38 premiere, entitled “Wrong End of the Gun,” feels like a classic First 48 episode. There are twists and turns in the story from the very beginning; true crime viewers can only imagine how terrifying it must be to be bleeding to death, banging on a stranger’s door looking for help, and realizing that help isn’t going to come in time. That’s just one of several developments that give this case the feeling of a good crime novel, except for that it’s all true. And those are the best episodes—when audiences get to remember that truth can be just as intriguing and moving as fiction.
Just as importantly, it is—to quote one of the featured North Charleston detectives—full of “old-fashioned police work.” Every hour of The First 48 doesn’t shy away from the details of being a homicide investigator, but this one involves a lot of elbow grease. It’s searching the streets for a suspect and his car. It’s looking for enough cameras to even find the footage that leads to identifying the car. At the start of the episode, the North Charleston team doesn’t even know who the victim is or how he got to where he died.
The First 48 has always presented the most authentic look at what it means to be a homicide detective. There’s minimal intrusion from the camera crews. There aren’t separate “talking head” statements; anything said comes directly from the detectives in the moment. And the audience gets to see the little things that matter. There’s not as much excitement as TV crime dramas and even some other true crime series show. But there doesn’t have to be, because everyone who helps put The First 48 together finds the value in that old-fashioned police work.
It’s also a really smart idea for A&E to open The First 48 Season 30 with a North Charleston episode. They’re the show’s newest department, and viewers are still learning about this team of detectives, their personalities and their styles of working. “Wrong End of the Gun” is great for that, too, as the episode captures multiple discussions amongst the team, including a very important one about their legal options. This is an episode that doesn’t resolve in the traditional way, and the audience is able to understand why because of seeing that debate. The series needs a department other than Tulsa to break out, and North Charleston makes a strong impression here.
The First 48 Season 30 premiere makes a strong argument for why A&E and ITV still have an incredible property on their hands. The decision to pull cameras out of now-former cities was reportedly because there are plenty of episodes going through the production process, but the value of this show—what it has to say and how it says it—is always going to be relevant. Even with a fair amount of this episode blurred for legal reasons, it still has both entertainment value and emotional impact, and it accomplishes both those things with a minimum of fanfare.
There is one sidebar: this episode coincides with the release of the new The First 48 podcast. But before fans get too excited, there isn’t actually new content; it’s an audio repackaging of previously aired episodes, the first being the Tulsa hour “The Dark Trail.” The podcast takes audio from the episode and frames it with descriptive narration. (Unfortunately, the narrator is not First 48 narrator and award-winning audiobook reader Dion Graham.)
It’s fun to have the ability to take episodes with you, but A&E has an opportunity here to go back to some of the show’s earlier seasons and re-expose those episodes and their cities to the podcast audience. The First 48 Season 30 is a great accomplishment, and the podcast could be a platform to celebrate that. Because based on the quality of the season premiere, this show shouldn’t be going anywhere.
The First 48 airs Thursdays at 8:00 p.m. on A&E. Photo Credit: Courtesy of A&E.
