TV Crime Drama Research Articles

Female Detectives and the Moral Crisis in America: Women in the New TV Crime Drama

Female Detectives and the Moral Crisis in America: Women in the New TV Crime Drama

Beyond the Pastoral Paradise: Orienting Black and Muslim People in British Rural Space

While there is an increasing number of Black and Muslim stories in urban settings, cultural imaginations of the British rural as linked to whiteness are pervasive. Despite there being a long-established presence of Black and Muslim people in British rural areas, their bodies are excluded or made to disappear to make the rural and, by extension, the nation (supposedly) safe. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s notion of white habit worlds, this article explores the specific ways in which popular imaginations of rural spaces in the UK orient Black and Muslim bodies in relation to rurality. I will argue that whiteness as the racialisation of the pastoral form is closely imbricated with the Christian pastoral notion of Eden by close reading season five of the TV crime drama Shetland, the feature film Four Lions (2010) and the documentary Arcadia (2017). By asking how these configure British rural space through their orientation of Black and Muslim bodies and how they contest or reinforce the (lack of) belonging of bodies considered ‘non-white’/‘non-Christian’ in rural spaces, I inquire how these productions complement each other in what they have to say about the presence of Black and Muslim bodies in British rural space and how this relates to wider debates about immigration and national identity.

Dysfunction, Deviancy, and Sexual Autonomy: The Single Female Detective in Primetime TV

As the number of single women has grown within Anglo-American society, there has been a proliferation of discourses around single women within popular culture. At the same time, there has been a resurgence in female-centered media representations of detectives. This article asks what cultural work the convergence of the single woman with the unconventional figure of the detective performs, and what this means for contemporary feminine subjectivities, exploring how she is constructed in three primetime TV crime dramas: The Bridge, The Good Wife and Fargo. I argue that while the single female detective foregrounds discourses of professionalism, rationality, and sexual autonomy, she simultaneously reinscribes patriarchal discourses of heteronormative coupledom and normative femininity through her social dysfunction, vulnerability and deviance, rendering the single woman a threat to femininity. Yet, at times, her liminal positioning allows her to occupy a more transgressive feminine subjectivity and subversively trouble the gender binary.

Our “Golden Age” of TV Crime Drama: The Artistic Promise of Television Blooms

Our “Golden Age” of TV Crime Drama: The Artistic Promise of Television Blooms

Our “Golden Age” of TV Crime Drama: The Artistic Promise of Television Blooms

Our “Golden Age” of TV Crime Drama: The Artistic Promise of Television Blooms

Jordskott. Las zaginionych, czyli przekraczanie granic Nordic noir

The TV crime drama is one of the most popular genres for European audiences and arguably also the most culturally sensitive and nuanced. The author in his article analyzes one of the Swedish examples of crime drama called Jordskott. Author interprets it through the prism of the Nordic noir aesthetics while characterizing this concept. In the course of analyzes, however, he notices that the Jordskott series escapes the genre framework and is located somewhere at the intersection of such film aesthetics as: Nordic noir, ecological thriller, horror or fairy tale.

MEDIA CONSTRUCTION OF CRIME REVISITED: MEDIA TYPES, CONSUMER CONTEXTS, AND FRAMES OF CRIME AND JUSTICE*

AbstractThrough this study, we shed new light on a key line of inquiry for criminologists: the way the media influence the public's understanding of crime and justice. We argue for expanding the lens of studies on the media's construction of crime, moving away from one‐dimensional reactions to crime to an integrated set of frames about crime and justice policy while considering the potential influence of a diverse array of media forms and content. Most critically, this social construction process must be placed in context, specifically, the racial composition in which people consume media. By using two nationally representative surveys matched with contextual data, we identify two forms of media consumption that seem important to understandings of crime: local television news and TV crime dramas. Interestingly, local news seems more important than national news even to perceptions of national crime trends, whereas news consumed over the Internet is not relevant, nor are 24‐hour cable news channels once political views are taken into account. Television news viewers are also more likely to support tougher crime policies. Importantly, context matters: The influence of television news and crime dramas on perceptions of crime is strongest among White respondents who live near larger numbers of Black neighbors.

Screening Affect: Rape Culture and the Digital Interface in The Fall and Top of the Lake

Although it often goes unremarked, digital screens are a key point of commonality across the many different transnational renditions of the story of violence against girls and women found in contemporary TV crime drama. The Fall (United Kingdom, 2013–) and Top of the Lake (United Kingdom/Australia/New Zealand/United States, 2013–) are two striking examples of TV crime dramas that frame their self-conscious interrogation of rape culture through digital media. Considering the mutual imbrication of feminist politics and the deployment of new media technologies on these shows, this essay considers how the digital interface functions as a way of mediating viewer response to violence against women. Resisting a reading of digital technologies as either inherently oppressive or inherently liberatory, the essay explores how these TV series navigate the tension between the simultaneous violence of new media and its investigative/feminist/affective potential.

Broken Bodies/Inquiring Minds: Women in Contemporary Transnational TV Crime Drama

This special issue concentrates on a dominant trend in contemporary transnational crime television: quality dramas featuring serial criminals who break the bodies/psyches of young women or children, thereby attracting the inquiries of female detectives who have suffered trauma themselves. This trend has generated resources, industrial partnerships, avid viewers, and, importantly for the authors here, feminist commentary across continents. We reframe the debate over whether these shows are feminist or misogynist by exploring staples of transnational language that underwrite their popularity in disparate national markets. In fact, we address the paradoxical gender-based violence and female empowerment at their core as crucial to their transnational legibility by tracking recurring elements that circulate a gendered and raced lingua franca rooted in fundamentals of media aesthetics: strategies of storytelling and genre, modes of perception, and the production of affect. Ultimately, these programs raise questions about cultural currencies of televised feminism in the digital era.

Norskov and the Logic of Place: The Soft Effect of Local Danish TV-drama Production

In this article, we analyse locality and locations in recent Danish TV crime drama with the series Norskov as a representative case. The series’ mode of production is rooted in the Danish broadcaster TV 2’s regional obligations and it illustrates a broader tendency in local TV drama production. The article introduces the concepts intertextual consciousness, stories from below and cartographic branding, and refers to the notion of re-imagined communities as a local administrative result of drama production and broadcast. The findings of the article are based on production and location analyses with primary focus on the series’ preproduction stage as well as empirical data material such as interviews, documents from the production process and material from the municipality of Frederikshavn (the location of Norskov), manuscript versions, and textual and visual material from the cinematographer and the location manager. Finally, the article combines provinciality and the notion of re-imagined communities in order to evaluate the effect of local drama production.

Book Review: The TV Detective: Voices of Dissent in Contemporary Fiction: The TV Crime Drama, Making Crime Television: Producing Entertaining Representations of Crime for Television Broadcast

Book Review: The TV Detective: Voices of Dissent in Contemporary Fiction: The TV Crime Drama, Making Crime Television: Producing Entertaining Representations of Crime for Television Broadcast

Silk blouses and fedoras: The female detective, contemporary TV crime drama and the predicaments of postfeminism

This article examines the markedly contrasting fates of two recent female protagonist led police series, the dismally received Prime Suspect USA (NBC, 2011) and widely celebrated The Fall (BBC, 2013– ), asking what the reception of each suggests about the state of play for women in TV crime drama in today’s postfeminist culture. What do women cops need to do to make the cut in an era in which, on the one hand, it seems they are more prevalent and have more opportunities than ever before (Gerrard, 2014); but also, on the flip side of this, in which they must somehow offer something ‘extra’ to survive in an era where the presence of a female detective in itself is no longer an innovation or novelty? In an era in which, to adopt Angela McRobbie’s much-cited phrase, ‘feminism has been taken into account’ (2007: 255), how can these series’ invocation of feminism or ‘feminist issues’ be understood as fundamental to their respective demise and triumph? I argue that, crucially, Prime Suspect USA’s account of sexist bullying in the NYPD was greeted as hackneyed and overblown, where The Fall spoke adroitly to a media culture in which ratings can be won via a superficial but glossily packaged nod to the female detective’s postfeminist ‘progress’, while relishing misogynistic violence. Hence the article also asks, what implications does an inquiry of the kind undertaken here – where interrogation of the genre combines comparative text-based analysis with critical reflection on the author’s own perturbed response to the eroticisation of violence against women in The Fall – have for future models of feminist criticism of TV crime drama?

How television shapes our worldview: media representations of social trends and change

1. Introduction Deborah A. Macey, Kathleen M. Ryan and Noah J. Springer Section I: Not Necessarily the News 2. A Bigger Screen for a Narrower View Jack A. Barwind, Philip J. Salem, and Robert D. Gratz 3. Measuring the Messenger: Analyzing Bias in Presidential Election Return Coverage Kahtleen M. Ryan, Lane Clegg, and Joy C. Mapaye 4. Television, Islam, and the Invisible: Narratives on Terrorism and Immigration Tim Karis Section II: Boy (and Girl) Meets World 5. Dreams Were Your Ticket Out: How Mass Media's Teachers Constructed One Educator's Identity Edward A. Janak 6. Defying Gravity: Fox's Glee Provides a Forum for Queer Teen Representation Katherine J. Lehman 7. Friendship and the Single Girl: What We Learned about Feminism and Friendship from Sitcom Women in the 1960s and 1970s Cindy Conaway and Peggy Tally Section III: America's Most Wanted 8. Epic Failures: Media Framing and the Ethics of Scapegoating in Baseball Chandler Harris and Lauren Lemley 9. Eyewitnesses to TV Versions of Reality: Relationship between Exposure to TV Crime Dramas and Perceptions of the Criminal Justice System Susan H. Sarapin and Glenn G. Sparks 10. Paramilitary Patriots of the Cold War: Women, Weapons, and Private Warriors in A-Team and Airwolf Charity Fox Section IV: More You Know 11. Lisa and Phoebe, Lone Vegetarian Icons: At Odds with Television's Carnonormativity Carrie Packwood Freeman 12. Television and the Environment: More Screen-Less Green Jennifer Ellen Good 13. From Welby to McDreamy: What TV Teaches Us About Doctors, Patients, and the Health Care System Katherine A. Foss Section V: Voice 14. Made Impossible by Viewers Like You: Politics and Poetics of Native American Voices in US Public Television Leighton C. Peterson 15. Black, Money: African American Audiences on Real Housewives of Atlanta Gretta Moody 16. He Who has the Gold Makes the Rules: Tyler Perry Presents The Tyler Perry Way Danielle E. Williams 17. Viewing 90210 from 12203: Affluent TV Teens Influence a Cohort of Middle Class Women Michelle Napierski-Prancl Section VI: Futurama 18. Construction of Taste: Television and American Home Decor Styles I. Akira and Larry Ossei-Mensah 19. Bordertown: Manufacturing Mexicanness in Reality Television Ariadne Alejandra Gonzalez 20. Cyborgs in the Newsroom: Databases, Cynicism and Political Irony in Daily Show Noah J. Springer

'... And After the Break': Police Officers' Views of TV Crime Drama

The police procedural drama is a staple feature of the TV listings. Detective fiction dominates the best sellers’ lists. Despite this, the day-to-day reality of policing is obscured from the vast majority of the public who have little direct contact with the Criminal Justice System (CJS). Skolnick [Skolnick, J. (1966). Justice Without Trial: Law Enforcement in a Democratic Society. New York: Wiley] argues that the police, as an organization, are one of the most hidden parts of the CJS. Reiner [Reiner, R. (2003). Newburn, T. (ed.), Policing and the Media in Handbook of Policing. Willan: Abingdon.]notes that the debate about the relationship between the media, policing, and crime has been a key feature of wider societal concerns about crime since the establishment of the modern police force. From a police perspective, Reiner [Reiner, R. (2003). Newburn, T. (ed.), Policing and the Media in Handbook of Policing. Willan: Abingdon.] notes that TV drama creates a simplistic narrative of crime solving that is almost completely divorced fromthe reality of modern police work. This article will discuss the findings of a pilot study, which sought to explore theattitudes of retired police officers to representations of policing in popular culture with a particular focus on TV dramas.

Still Seeking Forensic Reform

Forensics is such a part of the culture in the U.S. that almost everyone believes it can without question be used to find criminals. After all, they see forensics at work on TV crime dramas and hea...

Not all glamour.

I once had to ask a bunch of police officers to name their favourite TV crime drama. The Sweeney had just begun, and viewers believed they were seeing the gritty reality of modern policing for the first time.

Effects of Violence Against Women in Popular Crime Dramas on Viewers' Attitudes Related to Sexual Violence

In a posttest-only group experimental design, 176 college undergraduates (80 male, 96 female) watched TV crime drama scenes, which included either sexual or physical violence against women, to determine the effects of crime dramas on enjoyment, gender stereotypes, acceptance of the objectification of women, and rape myth acceptance. Male participants who watched sexual violence clips expressed less support for traditional gender stereotypes. There were no significant condition effects for the remaining outcome measures among the male participants except that they perceived the physical violence clips to be the most enjoyable. Results for female participants were mixed. Implications are discussed within the frameworks of social cognitive theory and the potential benefits of well-designed crime dramas to address sexual violence against women.

Crime as entertainment: The case of the TV crime drama

A viewing of the grim but popular BBC police procedural, Wallander (BBC1, 2008–), prompts a reflection on Richard Dyer's original formulation of entertainment as utopia in 1977. It is noted that the concept of entertainment has received relatively little attention within the fields of media and cultural studies since that time and that the history of the television crime drama provides an interesting case study with which to re-examine popular television as a particular form entertainment. The example of the early British police procedural, Fabian of the Yard (BBC 1954–1956) is discussed in order to reveal the complexity of the genre and its various pleasures which have ranged from documenting real crime, the pursuit of knowledge and truth to cultural tourism. Finally it is argued that pleasure in the ‘form’ of the TV crime drama and a familiarity with its series characters may well be a key factor in its assessing its success as a form of entertainment.

Women with a Mission

Prime Suspect constitutes a transitional text in the history of TV crime drama, for its simultaneous intervention into the genre's sexual politics and representation of `realism'. Camerawork is structured around a gendered dichotomy and there is an explicit concern in the text with who `looks', and at whom. The refusal or inability to be able to `see' the female victims becomes a motif highlighting the relative visibility and invisibility of different women and, with it, the gendered power structures contained in the act of looking. With its graphic attention to forensic detail and the foregrounding of the authenticity of the corpse, Prime Suspect paved the way in 1991 for the kinds of visual signifiers of `realism' now taken for granted in the genre. The intersection of these themes marks this text as a decisive moment in Lynda La Plante's ongoing reconfiguration of the boundaries and structures of TV crime drama.

Feminist television criticism: a reader

Introduction Introduction to Part One: Programmes and Heroines 1. The Search for Tomorrow in Today's Soap Operas: Notes on a Feminine Narrative Form - Tania Modleski 2. Sex and the and Consumer Culture: Remediating Postfeminist Drama - Jane Arthurs 3. Women with a Mission: Lynda La Plante, DCI Jane Tennison and the Reconfiguration of TV Crime Drama - Deborah Jermyn 4. Divas, Evil Black Bitches, and Bitter Black Women: African-American Women in Postfeminist and Post-Civil Rights Popular Culture - Kimberly Springer 5. Ellen, Television and the Politics of Gay and Lesbian Visibility - Bonnie J. Dow 6. You'd Better Recognize: Oprah the Iconic and Television Talk - Beretta E. Smith-Shomade 7. Take Responsibility for Yourself Judge Judy and the Neoliberal Citizen - Laurie Ouellette 8. Feeling Like a Domestic Goddess: Postfeminism and Cooking - Joanne Hollows 9. Feminism Without Men: Feminist Media Studies in a Post-Feminist Age - Karen Boyle 10. Girls Rule! Gender, Feminism, and Nickelodeon - Sarah Banet-Weiser 11. The (In)visible Lesbian: Anxieties of representation in the L word - Susan J. Wolfe and Lee Ann Roripaugh Introduction to Part Two: Audiences, Reception Contexts, and Spectatorship 12. Women's Genres: Melodrama, Soap Opera, and Theory - Annette Kuhn 13. Melodromatic Identifications: Television Fiction and Women's Fantasy - Ien Ang 14. National Texts and Gendered Lives: An Ethnography of Television Viewers in a North Indian City - Purnima Mankekar 15. Defining Asian Femininity: Chinese Viewers of Japanese TV Dramas in Singapore - Elizabeth MacLachlan and Geok-lian Chua 16. The Globalization of Gender: Ally McBeal in Post-Socialist Slovenia - Ksenija Vidmar-Horvat 17. The Performance and Reception of Televisual 'Ugliness' in Yo soy Betty la Fea - Yeidy M. Rivero 18. Sob Stories, Merriment, and Surprises: The 1950s Audience Participation Show on Network Television and Women's Daytime Reception - Marsha F. Cassidy Bibliography.