Diverse Innovations: Radical ‘Tec(h)s’

Abstract

Police and detective fictions have an established history in popular story-telling in all modern forms of narrative expression. They have been a mainstay of television since its early years and, along with soaps, continue to dominate the schedules in the US and UK alike. As with the other examples of TV drama discussed in this book, the styles and forms of presentation of detective fictions have varied considerably over time. They are now designed to offer a range of pleasures over and above narrative suspense and closure, often being commercially inclined in some directions rather than others in (post) modern production. To bring out some critical distinctions, this chapter explores three TV drama detective series — each innovative, but in different terms, and accordingly likely to have different effectivities.

… kitsch in a national theatre and an intensely original play in a police series. The critical discriminations are at once important and unassumable in advance (Raymond Williams, 1975: 12–13).

We’re not interested in formulas. They’re boring. … what we’ve set out to do is to make entertainment for grown-ups (Tony Garnett, executive producer Between the Lines).¹