Television Genres

In this shamelessly personal view of the 101 Best TV Crime Series, Mark Timlin has taken the straightforward approach of including any crime show that he's enjoyed since he was small. Classics range from Z-Cars to Hill Street Blues, The Professionals, The Bill and Callan - as well as 77 Sunset Strip and Highway Patrol. ...

Did you know that detective Adrian Monk (Monk) is afraid of milk? That Pinky's real first name on The Roaring '20s is Delaware? That on Charlie's Angels, Sabrina was the only Angel who was never seen in a bikini or swimsuit? These are only a few of the more than 9,800 facts readers will find in this work, which presents detailed information on 134 syndicated and cable series broadcast from 1948 to 2003, plus six experimental programs broadcast from 1937 to 1946 and 204 unsold pilots broadcast from 1948 to 1996, that featured the work of television's law enforcers who risk their lives to solve crimes and bring criminals to justice. ...

The police drama has been one of the longest running and most popular genres in American television. In TV Cops, Jonathan Nichols-Pethick argues that, perhaps more than any other genre, the police series in all its manifestations--from Hill Street Blues to Miami Vice to The Wire--embodies the full range of the cultural dynamics of television. Exploring the textual, industrial, and social contexts of police shows on American television, this book demonstrates how polices drama play a vital role in the way we understand and engage issues of social order that most of us otherwise experience only in such abstractions as laws and crime statistics. ...

Television reviews originally published in two sister publications: Variety (New York, N.Y.), and Daily Variety.

Calling All Cars shows how radio played a key role in an emerging form of policing during the turbulent years of the Depression. Until this time popular culture had characterized the gangster as hero, but radio crime dramas worked against this attitude and were ultimately successful in making heroes out of law enforcement officers. ...

CSI has been heralded in many spheres of public discourse as a televisual revolution, its effects on the public unprecedented. The CSI Effect: Television, Crime, and Governance demonstrates that CSI's appeal cannot be disentangled from either its production as a televisual text or the broader discourses and practices that circulate within our social landscape. This interdisciplinary collection bridges the gap between the study of media, particularly popular culture media, and the study of crime. ...

In the stark television drama The Fugitive, Dr. Richard Kimble, an innocent man convicted of murder, is on the run from the police and in pursuit of the real killer. The award-winning show, which aired on ABC from 1963 to 1967 and inspired a 1993 blockbuster movie, still has many devoted fans, none more passionate than literary and legal theorist and intellectual provocateur Stanley Fish. In The Fugitive in Flight, Fish examines the moral structure of the long-running series and explains why he thinks this may well be the greatest show ever aired on American network television. Analyzing key episodes, ...

Justice Provocateur focuses on Prime Suspect, a popular British television film series starring Oscar and Emmy award-winning actress Helen Mirren as fictional London policewoman Jane Tennison. Gray Cavender and Nancy C. Jurik examine the media constructions of justice, gender, and police work in the show, exploring its progressive treatment of contemporary social problems in which women are central protagonists. They argue that the show acts as a vehicle for progressive moral fiction--fiction that gives voice to victim experiences, locates those experiences within a larger social context, transcends traditional legal definitions of justice for victims, and offers insights into ways that individuals might challenge oppressive social and organizational arrangements. ...

Law and Justice as Seen on TV examines the impact, significance, and social and political problems raised by the enormous onslaught of law-related television programming, both fiction and nonfiction, in the years since the rise of live televised trials as major media events. The book weaves together the various strands--media history and analysis, legal history and policy, and the national turn to the political right in the last decades--which gave birth to this trend and has kept it thriving and growing, by leaps and bounds, to the present day. ...

This book is a comprehensive study of Nordic Noir television drama from the 1990's until today. The authors introduce the history of contemporary Nordic Noir from the perspective of place, production and location studies. The chapters include readings of well-known television crime dramas such as Beck, The Killing, Trapped and The Bridge as well as a range of other important Nordic Noir cases. ...

Policing the Media examines the reaction of a real police department in the USA to television representations of cops. Through interviews, personal observations and black and white photography, the author describes the lives and philosophies of street patrol officers, with close attention paid to the ambiguous attitudes they hold towards their televisual comrades.

TV shows that retain their popularity over the years do so for obvious reasons: good production values, good acting, and compelling storylines. But detective stories in particular also endure because they appeal to the gumshoe in all of us. America is obsessed with crime solving. Nancy Grace on CNN Headline News, Greta Van Susteren on Fox, and the seemingly annual recurrence of the courtroom sensation all testify to this fact. And these people and cases are able to reach their phenomenal status not simply because of the media-the media only demonstrates the enormous national appetite for this material. Rather, Cold Case, CSI, and Law & Order have achieved their current popularity because they all respond to the same national craving for crime, and do so with great skill and creativity. Round Up the Usual Suspects provides a comparison of the crime fighting models and justice proceedings of each of these TV series. ...

Still mourning the death of his former partner, Officer Pete Malloy is teamed with rookie Jim Reed, and together they serve and protect Los Angeles as Adam-12, their unit's radio call number.

Television series that combined elements of police procedural and courtroom drama. In the first half of each episode, Sgt. Nick Anderson of the LAPD tracked down and arrested a suspect. In the second half, Defense Attorney John Egan fought to exonerate the accused.

Peter Gunn is the perfect detective. Handsome, smart, two-fisted and a straight shooter. He has a girlfriend that can melt butter at twenty yards, a network of informants throughout the Los Angeles underworld, and a smokey jazz club to call home.

On the tough streets of L.A., detectives wage a daily war on crime. But the cops aren't the only ones with a story to tell. There are the victims, the rescue team, the D.A., the media, even the criminal. Boomtown sees them all.

Steven Bochco's award-winning, controversial police drama - so true to life that it earned primetime drama's first mature rating.

A tough, CIA-trained detective with Southern charm has been brought from Atlanta to Los Angeles to head up the Priority Murder Squad, a special unit of the LAPD that handles sensitive, high-profile murder cases. With her offbeat personality, a tough-as-nails approach and a track record as one of the country's leading investigators, Deputy Chief Brenda Johnson is a force to reckon with.

Cold Squad is about a team of Vancouver police officers in charge of investigating and solving cases that have been in the "cold" file for a while, which basically means the police gave up on them because there were no leads. (IMDb)

Columbo, a disheveled, cigar-chomping, trench coat-wearing police lieutenant, who appears to be an incompetent bumbler. Despite his appearance, Columbo is the shrewdest, most resourceful detective in the LAPD.

Witness how the evidence of crime can "see" the truth.

A pioneering police drama profiling the cases of Sgt. Joe Friday, the tough-minded detective who did his job with little glory or thanks.

Dr. Richard Kimble is accused in the murder of his wife. When his train crashes en route to Death Row, Kimble breaks free from the custody of Lt. Philip Gerard, and runs for his life. Fleeing from town to town, switching identities and toiling at countless jobs fuels Kimble's obsession to catch the real killer - a one-armed man he saw leaving the crime scene. His obsession is matched only by Gerard's - who blames himself for Kimble's escape and who will stop at nothing to get him back.

Powerful patrol cars, fast motorcycles, and superheterodyne two-way radios combine to fight crime on the rural highways of America's wide open spaces.

Day to day, the officers of the Baltimore Police Department Homicide Division face one of the United States worst crime rates, not to mention the pressures of their own personal lives. Some days, justice isn't just blind, it flat-out just doesn't exist. This season includes "Subway" guest starring Vincent D'Onofrio. It also includes the Frontline episode "Anatomy of a Homicide" where they discuss all the elements that make up the "Subway" episode.

New York City Detective Mike Logan and Sergeant Paul Cerreta are working the streets of the 31st precinct in relentless pursuit of criminals. Once the criminals are caught by Logan and Cerreta, it is up to Executive ADA Ben Stone and his assistant ADA Paul Robinette to bring them to justice.

When a young woman is found brutally murdered, and the DCI in charge is unable to take up the case, the role is passed on to Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison, the first female DCI to handle such a responsibility. Between a slippery suspect and resistance from her team of detectives, Tennison has her hands full.