James Ellroy Finally Gets A TV Show With A Talking Animated Dog Sidekick

I’ve spent the last hour trying to figure out if what I’ve heard about James Ellroy’s new Investigation Discovery show, James Ellroy’s LA: City of Demons, is true. Namely that it features Ellroy and a talking animated dog named Barko. But not just any talking animated dog - Barko is a corrupt drug sniffing dog.

As far as I can tell, this is not a massive put on engineered by Ellroy, despite the fact that I haven’t been able to find any actual images of the animated talking dog in question.

The show is real, though. It debuts January 19th on Investigation Discovery, and it opens with Ellroy once again exploiting the murder of his mother. The concept of the series intrigues me, although I don’t know how much of Ellroy’s 40s-era hipster patter I can deal with in real life. In his books I love it, but coming out of the man’s own mouth it makes me kinda cringe.

Here’s a trailer for the show. After that is an interview Ellroy did where he describes the weird place Barko will have in the program.