amazing resource to help with planning
TRANSCRIPT
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Section A
5
Section AIntroduction 6
Media language 7
Representation 18
Audience 22
Institutions 25
History of the genre 30
Future of the genre 32
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GCSE Media Studies Teaching television crime drama
IntroductionYou turn on the television and see a policeman shouting at a suspect in a small, dim room, banging his st on
the table, with dramatic music in the background. You know without thinking that you are watching a crimedrama.
But how do you know this?
You recognise the ingredients:
angry policeman
shocked suspect
interview room
the story o the police trying to nd the criminal
the close-up camera shot o the policemans st
serious music
dim lighting
the subject is law and order v crime.
So what is television crime drama?
Its a type o television programme. Television programmes are a type o media text. Dierent types o texts
are called genres. Think o a genre as a recipe, with a list o ingredients. These are the conventions o the
genre. All o those elements which make you recognise a crime drama are called conventions.
This book will explore the genre and conventions o crime drama in two sections.
In the rst section, well look at the genre o crimedrama through the our areas o Media Studies we
call the Key Concepts.
These are:
Media Language
Representation
Audience
Institutions.
Well consider characters and storylines, style and
setting and some o the ideas in crime drama.
Youll think about how people are shown in crime
drama and how viewers eel about it. The business
side o television has an eect on crime drama
too and well look at how it works within television
companies and how crime dramas get made.
Finally, well look back at the history o crime drama
and think about its uture.
The second section gives you a wealth oresources to work through the genre and
understand it. You can get to know it really well and
this will help you when you come to your external
or controlled assessment. There is inormation on
how the external assessment works and how to
prepare or it. At the end is a glossary that explains
a lot o the terms used in the book.
When youve read this book, you will know the
genre o television crime drama inside out. Who
knows, perhaps youll produce your own crimedrama one day! So, lets get started. Our rst key
concept is Media language.
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Media language
7
Media languageTelevision crime drama is a media text. You can read a media text, just as you can read a book. It uses its
own language to speak to the audience. We call this media language. In this section, well look at the mainconventions o crime drama and think about how they use media language to tell us stories.
These conventions are:
Character types
Setting
Narrative
Style
Themes.
Character types
In television crime drama, there is a variety o dierent types o people. The main categories are ocers o the
law, victims, suspects and criminals. Criminals commit the crimes, victims suer and the ocers o the law try
to solve the crimes. Mostly, we root or the law to win and the villains to lose. The characters drive the story
orward, making us love or hate them.
Ocers o the law
The law represents the orces o good in crime drama. But they are not all handsome heroes. Youll oten
notice that the ocers o the law are complicated people, with problems and faws. This makes them more
real and helps you to like them, identiy with them and want them to succeed.
Here are a ew common character types rom the right side o the law. You can
also call these stock characters.
Hero cop, eg Jack Bauer (24), McCloud, Nick Rowan (early Heartbeat),
Dixon of Dock Green and Aurelio Zen (Zen)
Heroine cop, eg Cagney and Lacey, Inspector Kate
Longton (Juliet Bravo), Jane Tennison (Prime
Suspect) and Brenda Lee Johnson (The Closer)
Anti-hero, eg Vic Mackey (The Shield) and
Dexter Morgan (Dexter)
Quirky detectives, eg Kojak, Columbo, Robert
Goren (Law and Order: Criminal Intent) and
Adrian Monk (Monk)
Bad-tempered but brilliant detectives, eg
Andy Sipowicz (NYPD Blue), Inspector
Morse, Peter Boyd (Waking the Dead) and
Wallander
Rookie, eg Andy McNally (Rookie Blue),
Ben Sherman (Southland) and John
Clark Jr. (NYPD Blue)
Buddy partners, eg Crockett and Tubbs
(Miami Vice), Benson and Stabler (Law
and Order: Special Victims Unit) and
Starsky and Hutch
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GCSE Media Studies Teaching television crime drama
Grumpy, world-weary superior ocer, eg
Captain Cragen (Law and Order: Special
Victims Unit) and Lieutenant Bert Samuels
(Cagney and Lacey)
Forensic scientists/pathologists/other medical
proessionals, eg Gil Grissom/Ray Langston
(CSI: Crime Scene Investigation) and Dr
Grayling Russell (Inspector Morse)
Psychology experts/consultants/helpers, eg
Fitz (Cracker), Patrick Jane (The Mentalist),
Tony Hill (Wire in the Blood), Toby Logan (The
Listener), Dr. Cal Lightman (Lie to Me), Allison
DuBois (Medium), Jessica Fletcher (Murder,
She Wrote), Richard Castle (Castle) and Shawn
Spencer (Psych)
Victims and criminals
Crimes usually involve victims. Most crime dramas
deal with one or two main crimes per episode,
sometimes more. New victims are created everytime, whilst the cops remain the same. Thereore,
the victims are usually played by actors who
come and go, oten orgotten as we move on
to the next crime. We tend to sympathise with
them and want the criminal who hurt them to be
caught and punished. Sometimes we are given
some insight into their background, eg CSI: Crime
Scene Investigation shows us the victims story,
using fashbacks. Other shows, such as Law and
Order: Criminal Intent, may ocus instead on the
villains, the way they think and why they committedthe crime.
Criminals represent the opposition to the law.
They are the bad guys versus the good guys. They
are not all evil, like Moriarty, Sherlock Holmess
enemy. They can be weak, misguided, stupid
or clever. In CSI: Miami, the criminals are oten
portrayed as selsh, arrogant people who we are
meant to dislike. Yet in other dramas, the criminals
are complex people who may have suered
themselves in the past. In Cracker, we are givena detailed understanding o the criminals, as the
psychologist Fitz delves into their minds. It can
even make us eel sorry or them. Police ocers
and detectives can arrest suspects, treat them
badly assuming they are guilty criminals, who then
turn out to be innocent. Someone we thoughtwas a villain becomes a victim o the law. In more
complex programmes, characters may not be
as simple as they seem. Perhaps the best crime
drama shows us such complicated characters,
people as ull o contradictions as you and me.
Every story has a range o personalities we
recognise rom other stories. The theorist Vladimir
Propp analysed these character types and came
up with a list o them. These include:
Hero who goes on a quest
Villain who is against the hero
Dispatcher who sets the hero o on their quest
Donor helps the hero
Princess the prize or the hero.
In crime drama, the quest is to solve the crime.
The Villain is the criminal who committed the crime
and eludes the Hero, the detective. The Dispatcher
might be the superior ocer who gives the case to
the detective. The Donor could be a witness whogives the detective clues to ollow. The Princess is
the prize or the detective, not love or marriage, but
the triumph o law and order.
FBI agents, eg Vivian Johnson (Without a
Trace), Sue Thomas: F.B.Eye, Don and Charlie
Eppes (Numb3rs) and Mulder and Scully (The
X-Files)
Lawyers, eg Jack McCoy (Law and Order) and
Rhonda Pearlman (The Wire)
Inormants, eg Huggy Bear (Starsky and Hutch)
and Bubbles (The Wire)
The central gure o the detective is so crucial to some crime dramas, that the show is named ater them:
we call this the eponymous hero, eg Wycliffe, Ironside, Inspector Morse,A Touch of Frost, Foyles War
and The Rockford Files. It may even be a duo we are rooting or, eg Dalziel and Pascoe; Dempsey and
Makepeace. Other programmes have a wider ocus, with many characters shown as equally important and
we like to watch them interact with each other: these are called ensemble dramas, eg The Bill, Law and
Order, The Wire, The Shield andZ Cars.
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Media language
9
Setting
Places are a key convention o any drama. We associate certain places with dierent types o stories, such
as spooky houses in horror lms or space ships in science ction. Crime dramas have their own settings
we expect to see. There are rooms, such as the interview room mentioned previously, or the court room, the
autopsy room or the squad room at the police station.
There are wider settings, such as many dramas being set in the city, eg The Bill is set in a ctional district o
London called Sun Hill, whilst Crackertakes place in and around Manchester. The city can be seen as a place
o crime and threat, lled with stories o the clash between law and order on the gritty city streets. An early
example is Naked Cityrom the late 1950s, in which every episode ended with the ollowing narration: There
are eight million stories, in the Naked City. This has been one o them. Some crime dramas are even named
ater the cities in which they are set, eg NYPD Blue (New York); CSI: Miami and Miami Vice; Boomtown (a
nickname or Los Angeles) and Southland (a term or the greater Los Angeles area).
Yet not all crimes happen in the city and not all crime dramas are set there. Some are based in more rural
settings, rom the North Yorkshire Moors (Heartbeat) to picturesque Cornwall (Wycliffe), rom beautiul
gardens (Rosemary and Thyme) to the ctional county o Midsomer (Midsomer Murders), based onSomerset. You may think the number o crimes happening in these sleepy places is a bit unlikely, but viewers
dont seem to mind.
Narrative
Narrative is another word or story. Crime drama
tells us a story every episode. A great story,
because its a mystery. Were given clues to
ollow, lots o trouble along the way, and usually a
satisying end, with the crime oten, but not always,solved. The programme takes us on a mysterious
journey and we can play an active part in working it
all out, ie you might watch a suspect and say, He
did it! But did he? Youll want to stay to the end to
nd out. The story might be interrupted by adverts,
or even carry on in another episode tomorrow night
or next week. But you are involved now and you
will come back. You have to know: whodunit?
So, how do they do it? How does a crime drama
work?
Think o it like a jigsaw puzzle. Here are some o
the pieces:
opening teaser enigma
quest clues
set pieces confict
suspense dramatic irony
clihangers resolution.
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GCSE Media Studies Teaching television crime drama
Many crime dramas begin with an opening
teaser. We see someone attacked but we dont
see the perpetrator. Maybe there is a random
passer-by who nds a corpse and screams in
close-up at the camera. Not all crime dramas
begin like this, eg The Bill, which is more about the
relationships within the squad than a single crime.In Without a Trace we see the circumstances in
which the missing person goes missing. The Wire
doesnt t the usual ormula and may begin with
a street corner conversation. Every programme
does it dierently, but the unction o the opening is
to draw you in and make you want to watch. The
teaser does this very well, as it sets up a question
in your mind: what happened here? Who did this
terrible thing? Its a mystery and another name or
this is enigma.
This term enigma has been used by the theorist
Roland Barthes. He described how stories use
dierent codes to control the way inormation is
given to the audience. One o these, the enigma
code, sets up a riddle or the viewer to solve.
Crime dramas almost always tell stories wrapped
around mysteries. The heroes usually the orces
o law and order work hard to solve this mystery
and you go along with them on the journey. Its a
kind oquest or the truth, or right to triumph over
wrong. The story scatters clues or them and you
to ollow. Some dramas dont reveal the identity o
the criminal until near the end, eg Inspector Morse
and Waking the Dead. This can be called a closed
narrative. In others, we are shown the criminal at
the beginning, eg Columbo and Law and Order:
Criminal Intent. This is an open narrative. It is
how the crime is solved that keeps us going.
Along the way, we are shown scenes that we
recognise rom other crime dramas. We can call
these set pieces. We see a couple o detectives
at a crime scene, poking about at the body. This
scene is a set piece common to many crime
dramas. Others include the autopsy, asking
questions o witnesses, search
warrants, gathering evidence,
st ghts, gun battles,
chasing a criminal through
the streets on oot or in
a car, arrest o the main
suspect, interview room,interrogation and conession
and court room trial and verdict.
Sometimes we ollow only the detective hero, or
a wider range o police ocers and consultants,
or even the witnesses and criminals. Who we
ollow and what we see is called viewpoint. A
good example o an unusual use o viewpoint isBoomtown, where we see the story rst rom one
police ocers view, then exactly the same event
rom another ocers view, then rom a paramedics
view and so on. Only by seeing all the viewpoints
do we discover the truth about the crime.
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GCSE Media Studies Teaching television crime drama
Teaching activitiesThe ollowing activities are intended to provide a range o resources and strategies to be used with your
students. They are grouped, where appropriate, under the headings o the key concepts and teachers areencouraged to select and modiy activities to t the needs o their students.
LanguageWhat are the conventions o television crime drama?
What are the conventions o television crime drama? Activity plus
Crime drama titles
Narrative structure
Analysing a title sequence
RepresentationWatching the detectives
Watching the detectives Activity plus
Analysing representation in crime drama
Character types
AudienceWhy do people watch television crime drama?
Why do people watch television crime drama? Activity plus
Audiences and crime dramaScheduling
InstitutionsMapping television crime drama 1
Mapping television crime drama 2
Crime drama research
Comparing American television crime drama
ResearchingAlibi
Productiontasks
Creating a new crime drama
Creating a character
Storyboarding crime drama
Marketing a crime drama 1
Marketing a crime drama 2
Production details or crime drama
Extraactivities
Analysing a crime drama (group task)Starters, plenaries and extension tasks
Activity plus indicates a dierentiated activity designed to be used with less able students.
Tasks or high ability students can be ound in the extension section o Extra activities.
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Teaching activities
37
What are the conventions of television crimedrama?
Make a list o the common eatures you would expect to see in a television crime
drama programme.
What is television crime drama? Write a 50 word denition.
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GCSE Media Studies Teaching television crime drama
Watching the detectives
Using the rame sheet, research popular television sleuths.
Detective Programme Description
Jonathan Creek Jonathan Creek JC is an aide to a magician, lives in a windmill and
wears a duel coat. Solves seemingly impossible
crimes. Sidekick Joey Ross.
What similarities do you notice about popular crime-solvers?
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Teaching activities
43
Watching the detectives
Using the rame sheet, research popular television sleuths.
Detective Programme Description
Jonathan Creek Jonathan Creek JC is an aide to a magician, lives in a windmill and
wears a duel coat. Solves seemingly impossible
crimes. Sidekick Joey Ross.
DI Jack Frost A Touch o Frost
Sherlock Holmes Sherlock
Poirot Agatha Christies Poirot
Jessica Fletcher Murder, She Wrote
Kurt Wallander Wallander
Jane Tennison Prime Suspect
Miss Marple Miss Marple
What similarities do you notice about popular crime-solvers?
Activityplus
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GCSE Media Studies Teaching television crime drama
Scheduling
The Head o ITV1 has given you the task o scheduling the ollowing shows.
Decide when you would broadcast these shows and explain your reasoning.
Miss Marple Returns
A new series sees the return o the popular amateur sleuth. Each episode is set in the 1930s and
eatures an all star cast. Six episodes, each two hours long.
O the Blood
Hard hitting US import. Based in New York, it ollows the work o an elite branch o the NYPD
investigating a series o gruesome murders. It eatures some strong language and graphic images.
Each o the 12 episodes is one hour long.
Evenin All
A nostalgic, gentle police drama set on a ctitious Irish island, eaturing humour and romance.
Each o the 12 episodes is one hour long.
The X Team
Danny (12), Sunita (14), Sam (13) and Smudge the dog orm a new crime ghting team the X
Team helping the police solve a series o crimes in their neighbourhood. Six episodes, orty-ve
minutes each.
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Teaching activities
55
Researching Alibi
Alibi is a digital television channel that broadcasts only crime drama programmes
Using the internet and a television listing magazine, nd out more aboutAlibi.
(Websites: www.uktv.co.uk/alibi/homepage/sid/500 www.barb.co.uk)
Which media institutions ownAlibi?
What types o crime drama programmes eature onAlibi?
Who do you think is the target audience orAlibi?
What can you nd out about the audience gures orAlibi?
What is the slogan or the channel?
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GCSE Media Studies Teaching television crime drama
Creating a character
Using the outlines below create a new lead character or a television crime drama.
The second character could be a sidekick or an adversary.
Name Name
Character description Character description
Quirk/point o interest Quirk/point o interest