Tom Skerritt

Tom Skerritt plays Jimmy Brock on Picket Fences, the sheriff in a 1990s Rome, Wisconsin that looks like a postcard until the weekly case goes sideways into the surreal. David E. Kelley and Bochco energy fuse small-town legal drama with fever-dream premises. Quality-network oddity: family, courtroom, and stranger-than-fiction sharing an hour. Skerritt is the calm the weirdness requires.

1990s television, CBS papers, 1992–1996 on the spine: Picket Fences. A sheriff's family navigates outrageous crimes and social issues in Rome, Wisconsin, a postcard town that goes sideways into the surreal every week. Tom Skerritt plays Jimmy Brock as 1990s quality-network oddity: the badge as a calm center in a town that refused to stay cute. Watch him when the title card needs a body instead of a brand.

Begin at s01e01. Small-town legal drama with fever-dream premises: Kelley-Bochco oddity already asking whether CBS aired a dare. s02e01 is the fluent middle: Turpitude: quality-network title as thesis, Emmy bait that still behaves like CBS accidentally aired a dare. Hold s01e10 for the later stake — The Snake Lady: postcard Rome going sideways, stranger-than-fiction still sharing the hour with a family courtroom. Watch him in those seats. Position, not invented plot.

Come for the oddity; stay for the family the badge is supposed to protect. On TV Flash he is 1990s ensemble steel — not a guest in his own town, the official who makes the fever dream feel municipal. Watch the hour when the premise goes feral. Brock is why you still trust the map.