Can Watching TV Help You Become a Private Investigator?

Most people assume TV has nothing useful to teach aspiring private investigators.

That’s only half true.

In my experience, about 50% of what you see in crime shows, detective films, and spy thrillers is unrealistic fantasy. The other 50% contains surprisingly accurate tradecraft.

Once you’ve had even basic investigative training, you start noticing it immediately:

• good surveillance positioning

• terrible surveillance positioning

• realistic interviews

• fake interrogations

• smart investigative thinking

• reckless shortcuts that would destroy a real case

Movies and TV won’t make you a PI.

But they can train your eye to think like on.

Bosch: Good Surveillance or Bad Surveillance?

One of my favorite shows to study is Bosch because it mixes realistic tactics with major mistakes.

Here's one worth thinking about:

Bosch is waiting for a truck to pull out so he can follow it. His subject's vehicle backs out of its parking space. Bosch is sitting in his car, directly in the subject's line of sight.

Good technique or bad?

1. Here’s the subject’s vehicle as it backs out of its parking space.

2. Here’s Bosch in his car.

   

3. Here's the view from Bosch’s vehicle.

   
   

   

   
   

Is this good or bad? Specifically, is the position of Bosch’s vehicle good technique or not? Think about it and think about what other options he might have had.

The problem? He’s parked directly in the subject’s line of sight.

For an average unaware subject, that may be perfectly acceptable. But in this scene, Bosch is following a rogue cop—someone likely trained in surveillance awareness and countersurveillance.

That changes everything. Against a subject like that, sitting in plain view is a serious error.

In the real world, this would likely require a surveillance team with multiple vehicles instead of a single follow.

That’s one of the first lessons investigators learn:

Good technique always depends on context.

And this example is the 50/50 rule in action. Same scene, same technique—right in one context, wrong in another.

Reacher: Great Books, Mixed TV—But One Line Every Investigator Should Know

I’m also a big fan of Reacher, especially the books by Lee Child. The books are great, often realistic in my opinion (except that Reacher never dies), and fun to read. You can learn about confrontation, ambushes (verbal, physical and tactical), and all kinds of creative problem solving.

The Reacher books contain one line every investigator should remember as it applies to almot every case:

“In an investigation, assumptions kill.”

Assumptions:

• waste time

• distort facts

• create tunnel vision

• cause investigators to miss important details

Good investigators follow facts first.

Theories are useful. Leads matter. But facts decide where the investigation goes.

Your job as an investigator is to gather documentable facts. When you've collected enough of them, step back and look—we often do this on a whiteboard—and let the facts tell you where to go next.

And here's something important to understand early: your deliverable as a PI is never "he did it." That's above our pay grade. Judges, juries, and attorneys make that call. Your job is to deliver facts. For example:

• Subject owned a bowie knife

• The victim was killed by a bowie knife

• The murder weapon was found 150 miles from the subject's home

• The subject's fingerprints were on the murder weapon

• The subject and the victim had an argument the previous day

Conclusive? Inconclusive? Not your call. But if you've got those five facts documented, you're getting somewhere.

The TV series, by the way, turned Reacher into something of a comic strip. I don't watch it myself. Stick with the books. Below are two of my favorite Jack Reacher books:

22 Films & TV Series Worth Watching If you Want To Become A Private Investigator

I’ve put together a curated PDF of 22 films and series worth studying if you want to sharpen surveillance awareness, investigative thinking, and real-world tradecraft.

It covers crime dramas, detective stories, and intelligence thrillers focused on:

• surveillance

• undercover operations

• informant handling

• counter-surveillance

• investigative strategy

• intelligence tradecraft

Get the free PDF here

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Some depict realistic technique. Others show exactly what not to do in the field. All of them train you to see investigations differently. In answer to what this post set out to determine: yes, watching TV can help you become a private investigator.

—Dave Amis