Contextual Studies - Crime Dramas

Scandy Noir: scandinavian crime drama - inspired by British crime dramas.


The Bill


- Set in fictional london police station. - Longest running british crime series. Originally 12x6-min episodes. From 1988-2005, became year round twice-weekly schedule. Peak viewing of 11m in 2005, rivalling coronation street.


Mise en Scene real locations or studio? Authenticity? (sets, props, etc)?


Camera and Sound


Single or multi camera? Visual style?


Narrative and genre conventions


realistic characters or stereotypes? acting naturalistic or exaggerated? diversity


What is it?


Evolved from literary detective fiction In TV often police procedural sub-genre - ‘realistic’ investigation of a crime by law enforcement teams.


Edgar Allan Poe - The Murders in the Rue Morgue


Archetypal genre storyline - ‘Whodunnit’ (enigma to be solved)


‘Howcatchem’ - audience know whodunnit, pleasure is process)


Technical Conventions


Editing: chase scenes, montage, flashbacks. Single camera Camera movement - either handheld mockumentary style or steadicam, dollies, cranes Visual devices: ECU’s for tension or reveal Tilted, low and high angles. Slow motion. CG recreations (CSI) Graphical text (Sherlock)


Narrative Conventions


Episodic series format - typically 60 minutes. Usually self-contained closed narratives Repetition - relies on returning central cast (team) and location (police station), Conflicts in policing methods, often intrinsic to the drama. Resolution - the very nature of detective/crime genre demands crime is resolved by setting up a mystery. (Film and TV guidelines demanded that 'crime must not pay’)


Symbolic conventions


Lighting - low-key. Many crime dramas use dark-dark contrasts in costume, setting and lighting (e.g. use of flashlights) Authenticity - props, costumes, settings New conventions - detective via computer. lighting and exposition critics have said that crime dramas have lost mystery thanks to the computer. more interesting to get people outside.


Crime genre archetypes


The Rebel: (hero,anti-hero), detective or senior cop. Jaded. Doesn’t always play by the rules. Sometimes corrupt. The King: (authority figure): commanding officer or station sergeant. The Innocent: (rookie): audience surrogate and empathy. The Sage: Eldery, wise. If not senior figure, often doctor or scientist. The Villain: Binary opposition to hero and rookie. Many crime dramas use binary opposition: good and evil, law & order. But often the investigator has their moral boundaries challenged.


Many also use classic Freudian triangles: hero (anti-hero) as id, Authority as super-ego, rookie as ego that tries to balance the oppositionals.


Critical Approaches to genre


Realism - British crime dramas are often in social realist mode; many popular US crime dramas more escapist and may involve breaking with realist conventions.


Representation - gender and diversity; issues of ‘political correctness’ vs empirical fact.


Psychoanalysis - genre characters as Freudian archetypes, criminal pathology (the monster/the uncanny); crossover with horror genre (‘return of the repressed’)


Return of the Repressed