• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, Yesterday

One of TV’s best police docuseries, and the show that is the granddaddy of all reality-forensics shows are on the move.

Starting Wednesday, “Alaska State Troopers” moves to A&E for what is essentially its ninth season with new episodes after spending its previous eight seasons on National Geographic.

The move to A&E represents a revival for the show, which has had no new episodes since at least 2015, when it ended its first run on NatGeo.

The one-hour series follows Alaska state police troopers as they patrol and respond to emergencies in the vastness of the largest and least-densely populated of all 50 states -- 663,268 square miles; population: 740,133.

While many of Alaska’s bigger cities, towns and village have law enforcement departments of their own, the troopers are the ones who police the state’s most remote areas. And there are only 400 of them.

In this great territory made up mostly of wilderness, two issues arise again and again in the calls the troopers respond to -- drinking and gun-ownership.

For the most part, these incidents end peacefully, particularly the ones related to alcohol in which drunken threats are made to neighbors and spouses.

Or in other cases, the troopers get a call that an inebriated person is lying out in the snow somewhere with no pants on and he refuses all help to get him inside.

I have also seen encounters with wildlife, particularly moose that wander into front yards at night and do not respond to the homeowner’s efforts to drive the animal off his property. It doesn’t help that the homeowner is often drunk at the time.

There are also calls with even greater intensity and danger to the officers who face off against stubborn individualists on remote highways who don’t appreciate being hassled by state police. Many of these drivers are drunk, high and belligerent.

Meanwhile, the Versant-owned Oxygen True Crime cable channel is getting ready to begin airing “Forensic Files,” which was the first in a long line of true-crime docuseries that have been a staple of basic cable for more than 20 years.

New episodes of “Forensic Files” were made from 1996 to 2011, during which time the show moved around -- first on TLC (when it was still The Learning Channel), then CourtTV and TruTV. 

The show eventually made its way to HLN (formerly Headline News), where it aired for years and its popularity grew.

The Oxygen deal to pick up the show was announced last May by Content Partners, which now owns the show. The show starts soon on Oxygen, which has already been promoting it.

Each half-hour episode of “Forensic Files” tells the story of a murder in which forensic science played the key role in establishing the guilt of the accused.

Since many of its episodes go back 20 or more years, the shows are old, but in a way, that is part of the show’s attractiveness. 

So is its distinctive theme music and the mesmerizing narration by the late Peter Thomas, who was likely the best narrator/storyteller in the whole history of true-crime shows. He died in 2016 at the age of 91.

“His skill at telling these stories -- applying just the right tone to every scene -- is unparalleled,” the TV Blog wrote back in 2016.

Nearly 10 years after his death, Thomas is still growing his fan base, according to a Wall Street Journal story last month.

The story reported on how long-time fans find his voice to be so soothing that they enjoy watching “Forensic Files” just before bedtime.

The story was headlined: “Can’t Sleep? Try Listening to This Man Talk About Torture and Death.”