‘Steven Seagal: Lawman’: Steven Seagal’s short-lived reality show
Reality TV has long since become a haven for fading stars desperately trying to claw their way back into the public eye after their careers have gradually slid downwards and plunged them headlong into hard times. That’s exactly why it was inevitable Steven Seagal would eventually get in on the act.
His career peaked in the early 1990s when Under Siege delivered the biggest box office hit of his professional life. It’s the only entry in his filmography that can justifiably be deemed as inarguably good, and a huge amount of that credit should go to Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Busey. However, he’s continued working solidly ever since.
Only diehard Seagal supporters will be up-to-date with his latest goings-on in the world of cinema, which isn’t even intended as an insult, considering only two of his films since 2002 have secured a wide theatrical release. One of them saw him cast on an entirely self-aware and metatextual basis after he was drafted in to fight Danny Trejo with a sword in Robert Rodriguez’s Machete.
In what was his first sojourn to the small screen in any capacity since he was branded as the worst guest host in Saturday Night Live history by creator Lorne Michaels, Steven Seagal: Lawman premiered in December 2009. The title is entirely descriptive, following the actor as a camera crew trails him carrying out the job as a reserve deputy sheriff. However, this being Seagal, there’s a tall tale of two to be found within.
The lifelong martial arts practitioner, who once claimed he’d been secretly training government agents, presumably knowing that even if he had the classified information, it couldn’t be verified, revealed he attended a Los Angeles police academy. Not just that, he was also allegedly awarded a certificate from the Peace Officer Standards & Training, the organisation that approves and accredits candidates for active duty.
However, officials in both California and Louisiana confirmed that neither branch has any record of Seagal holding the documentation after being contacted by the Los Angeles Times, which isn’t really all that much of a surprise. He also proudly shares on Lawman that he’s been “working as an officer in Jefferson Parish for two decades under most people’s radar,” conveniently forgetting to mention that his title and rank of Reserve Deputy Chief is largely a ceremonial one.
Like the majority of law enforcement-orientated reality shows, Lawman consisted largely of Seagal and his cohorts turning up at the scene of low-level crimes like drug busts, cockfighting rings, and traffic violations. However, there’s plenty of unintentional hilarity to be derived from just how straight-faced and seriously he treats the job. It managed to last for three seasons – although production on the second was halted when he was hit with a sexual harassment lawsuit – before it was eventually taken off the airwaves in 2014.
