“Spooks” (or “MI:5″ as it’s called in the US) from England is another one of those procedural shows, but from across the pond.

And I’d argue that “True Lies” counts, too.

I used to be quite the fan. But then I was ten…

Also, _Resident Evil: Apocalypse_ (and maybe the last one which I didn’t watch), but more notably the Resident Evil video games, have a heavy man/woman buddy cop element to them – with Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine and other various partners that redo the formula over and over again.

And also, um, how the Hell did we miss Mulder and Scully in all this?

I mean, they had a man/woman buddy cop movie come out _This Summer_, for Chrissakes!

See: The Inspector Lynley mysteries, Foyle’s War, Touching Evil, Cracker

I don’t know if you can call them “buddy cops,” but they are buddies, and they are cops, kinda. The reason they’re popular doesn’t have to do with the audience so much as the writers, I think. Most of these mystery series were based on mystery novel series which were written by women.

(By the way, the other type of “buddy cop” show the Brits seem to have, unsurprisingly, is the “upper class Oxford alum teams up with working class guy” show. It would be fun to see more American buddy cop movies that follow this form. They could pair up Ian McKellen and Jeff Foxworthy, or David Hyde Pierce and Bruce Willis, for example.)

On this side of the pond we have Bones, CSI, SVU, etc. Of course, “police procedural” isn’t the same genre as “cop action movie,” and they clearly have different audiences.

Anyway, I like the romance novel cover :)

Also, you missed a plethora of “Female cop undercover in a world of secrets and seduction gets in too deep and questions whether she’s the hunter or the hunted” movies that have buddy cop elements. An old favorite mine is probably the old 80s flick _Impulse_. But they’re all pretty much exactly the same, and everybody who watched them watched them for the same reason — the 90 seconds or so of breasts permitted in R rated movies.

Going back to more mainstream non-sci-fi non-skinemax fare, the great male-female pairings along these lines are from TV, and they’re usually not-quite-cops (like P.I.s or spies or something similar). The contrast is usually between a guy who is very much into his job and experienced and a woman who has less professional experience, but is smart and sassy and makes him look stupid a lot (actually, that would match McCain and Palin quite well). They’re on television because they were watched by housewives who fantasized about living lives of danger without losing their femininity — not a target audience for action movies.

- MOONLIGHTING
- HART TO HART
- SCARECROW AND MRS. KING

to name a few

- Exit to Eden (Dan Aykroyd and Rosie O’Donnell go undercover to some sort of S&M resort.)

- The Medallion (Jackie Chan and Claire Forlani look for some mystical thing, I think.)