The show is made up of footage shot by film units who accompany selected police officers while they execute their duties. The show has followed officers in 140 different cities in the United States and also has filmed in Hong Kong, London, and the former Soviet Union.
The show is well known for its theme song, "Bad Boys", by Inner Circle.
The show has been criticized for its predominant focus on the criminal activities among the poor. Critics of this aspect of the show say it unfairly presents the poor as responsible for most crime in society while ignoring the white-collar crimes that are typical of the more wealthy. One response to this is that television is primarily a visual medium, requiring regular footage on a weekly basis to sustain a show, and police officers "busting in" on some office where identity theft papers are being created or other high-level crime rings are operating do not happen very often, thus it is not likely to be filmed and thus not shown. Low-level crime (by poor people) happens every day, providing large quantities of material suitable for filming.
Reality television is a genre of television programming which generally is unscripted, documenting actual events over fiction, and featuring "ordinary" people over professional actors.
Though there were earlier precedents on radio and television, the first reality show in the modern sense was probably the PBS series An American Family.
Due to the typically low production values associated with reality television (such as having only a handful of people on the set, relatively inexpensive sets, and not much post-production), this type of programming is very popular with television network executives wishing to maximize profits.
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