10 Smartest TV Detectives
1. Lester Freamon (The Wire)
The Wire’s Jimmy McNulty believes he’s the smartest detective in Baltimore, if not the USA, but the prize really goes to his erstwhile partner, Lester Freamon. Wise and experienced, calm and perceptive, enough maverick tendencies to give him an edge but not enough to render him totally self destructive, Freamon is a true detective’s detective.
He makes a subdued impression in season one, foisted on Daniels’ team after 13 years (and four months) working in the pawn shop unit. He seems like a husk of a man, a desk jockey, until he uses his own initiative to put a face to the team’s prime target, Avon Barksdale.
From there, he’s a made man, well known to be just about the best homicide cop in the city. Freamon is instrumental in every one of The Wire’s main cases, busting a few of them wide open single handedly.
His disdain for the chain of command reaches a head in season five, and he bends the rules to breaking point, but even then he does so in a genius way, cooking up fake crimes to divert more money to real police cases. He’s the man you’d want on the case if anything happened to you.