Diversifying Detection: Proliferation of Channels and Television Cycles 1980–2000

Abstract

Towards the end of the 1970s, detective dramas were increasingly set outside the police force, with series like Charlie’s Angels or Hart to Hart moving the genre into Reagan’s neoliberal 1980s with an emphasis on the private enterprise of crime-solving. Dramas like Magnum P.I., Simon & Simon, Riptide (NBC, 1984–6), Moonlighting or Remington Steele all feature main characters who run their own detective agencies. This move into private business releases the main characters of these dramas from the obligation to follow police protocol (or any established rational-scientific protocols). Thus, a number of them use methods that would be illegal for police detectives (predominantly breaking and entering), and dramas often use spectacle to gloss over a lack of logic. While Murder, She Wrote or the hybrid between legal and detective drama Matlock are decidedly rational-scientific, most dramas of the 1980s employ irrational-subjective methods of detection. These include a range of dramas set in the police force, particularly Miami Vice and Hill Street Blues, with their innovative aesthetics and narrative structure (see Chapter 4). These dramas introduce chaotic diegeses that cannot be ‘ordered’ through rational-scientific police procedure, but necessitate irrational-subjective undercover work or a reliance on coincidence.