Female Detectives and the Moral Crisis in America: Women in the New TV Crime Drama
Female Detectives and the Moral Crisis in America: Women in the New TV Crime Drama

Summary/Abstract: The paper investigates recent American TV crime drama in which prominent roles are given to female protagonists. The TV miniseries Unbelievable (2019) and Mare of Easttown (2021) place women in central roles and, by going beyond the classic formula of crime drama, reshape the format of the genre. They address significant social and economic issues, often ignored by conventional crime drama narratives. The paper offers a brief investigation of the figures of female police detectives in older American TV crime drama, and in Scandinavian TV noir, arguing, that the evolution of the character of the female detective is a transnational phenomenon. The female detectives in Unbelievable and Mare of Easttown are excellent investigators, but they also display a strong moral integrity and deep emotional response to the injustice brought by crime. The two crime dramas focus not just on the investigations, but explore the social causes of crime and point, among other things, to gender, class and race inequalities, instability of the family, corruption, inefficiency of government institutions, and inadequacy of health and social care as sources of disintegration of American society. The stories offer some hope and reassurance to the viewer by showing that the detectives can combat crime and bring temporary order to the affected communities, but express lack of confidence in the permanence of core American values.

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