Weekend TV : Fox’s ‘Cops’ Targets the Los Angeles Area; NBC’s ‘Drug Wars’ Looks at Camarena Case

Real-life crime stories in Los Angeles and Latin America highlight a TV weekend that also features a comic, around-the-world jaunt and a searing chronicle of one man’s fight against apartheid.

“Cops,” Fox’s gritty series that rides around with on-duty police officers, will air the first of 12 shows shot in Los Angeles tonight at 8 on Channels 11 and 6. These programs will feature footage of Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies on patrol in West Hollywood, Lennox, Lakewood and Malibu and will focus special attention on officers working in the narcotics and homicide units.

Sunday, NBC’s much-hyped, three-part miniseries, “Drug Wars: The Camarena Story,” which tells the story of Drug Enforcement Agent Enrique Camarena’s death at the hands of drug dealers, begins at 9 p.m. (4)(36)(39). Subsequent installments air Monday and Tuesday evenings at 9.

The Discovery Channel will televise an Academy Award-nominated documentary, “The Cry of Reason,” Sunday at 5 p.m. and again at 9 p.m. This film profiles ex-Dutch Reform clergyman Beyers Naude, an Afrikaner who was once a contender to be prime minister of South Africa, and his struggles against apartheid.

Arts & Entertainment, meanwhile, has “Around the World in 80 Days” Sunday at 5 p.m. and again at 9 p.m. Monty Python alum Michael Palin attempts to re-create Phileas Fogg’s fictional journey, circling the globe in 80 days without the aid of air travel. This twisted seven-part travelogue will continue for six subsequent Sundays.