What kind of television do you watch? Does your viewing include the crime, police and spy genre? It is helpful to have a broad overview of what audiences are offered.
On our course, we have a pair of case studies that we have to know and compare, one contemporary and one historical: Cuffs and The Avengers.
Cuffs, Series one, episode one The Avengers 'The Town of No Return'
BBC1 25 October 2015 8 p.m Series four, episode one
ITV 2 October 1965
We will learn about the dominance of the police drama genre, the importance of the serial narrative form, the role of BBC1, how representations reflect context and how audiences are attracted.
Do you notice what channels broadcast the programmes that you watch? Each channel has its own brand identity and ethos, its own audience and its own way of attracting audiences.
To start us off, let's look at the first five minutes of the opening sequence of the mainstream BBC 1 detective drama, currently broadcast on Sunday evenings at 9 p.m., so after the watershed. It is based on the novels written by J.K.Rowling under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. The first episode premiered on 10 August 2017 at the British Film Institute and on 27 August 2017 on BBC television.
- Television crime drama Strike The Cuckoo's Calling Episode 1
- film language: how meaning is created through camerawork, editing, mise-en-scene and sound
- we look at how the detective is represented through film language and we consider what makes this programme exciting and watchable. Developing these skills in today's lesson will help you understand how audiences are hooked by long form narrative (this is a three-part narrative and is set to be a popular Sunday night staple for BBC). It will help you see that television drama reflects society (a particular social period) such as, in this episode, the contrasts between the glamorous life of the fashion model Lula's world and the drab, hand-to-mouth situation of the protagonist, Cormoran Strike.
Look at the site and sign up You are making a page called TV CRIME DRAMA where you will 'scoop' (collect / collate) websites that give you information on television crime drama.
I have created a similar ScoopIt as a model for you.
Here are some of the programmes that you might search for and 'scoop':
- traditional English crime drama like Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, Jonathan Creek, Death In Paradise
- US crime drama like CSI, NCIS
- police crime drama like Cuffs, Lewis
- Scandi crime drama like Wallender
- private investigators, like Strike
- historical texts, like The Avengers
You may know quite a bit about the codes and conventions of TV crime drama already.
Check what you know against this useful resource here.
