Showtime

Showtime (2002) is a buddy-cop comedy you can watch online on iFILM. A no-nonsense LA detective gets ambushed by reality cameras and finds his job rebuilt into a primetime TV show.

Mitch Preston (Robert De Niro) has spent twenty years working cases his own quiet way, and he loathes an audience. After he shoots out a news camera on a botched bust, the network spins it: instead of a lawsuit, they hand him his own cop reality series. His assigned partner is Trey Sellars (Eddie Murphy), a patrol officer who always wanted to play a cop on screen rather than be one. One man grumbles. The other never stops talking.

Director Tom Dey pits two comic registers against each other, De Niro's deadpan versus Murphy's motormouth, while Rene Russo's producer squeezes ratings out of the friction. William Shatner turns up as himself, coaching the pair on how to pose for the lens. It is a film that winks at its own genre, light and unfussy and built for a single evening. Stream Showtime (2002) online on iFILM.