A Few Bad Apples or the Logic of Capitalism?

This article investigates how neoliberal globalization has been mediated through audiovisual narratives since the 2000s. It identifies a cluster of films, produced by and circulating on German public television, which use the generic conventions of the popular crime genre to constitute a sub-genre—the televisual economic crime drama. Using a content and textual analysis that focuses on the backdrop of historical context and genre norms, the article examines key tropes to assess the critical potential of this sub-genre. The analysis demonstrates that both the containment theme of “a few bad apples” and a systemic critique can structure these narratives of neoliberalism. At its best, the televisual economic crime drama argues that alternatives to neoliberalism are possible by referencing Germany’s history of the social market economy and by featuring characters as well as images of active citizenship, solidarity, and collective action in the workplace.

Shadows from the past: Unstable memories and collective trauma in Black Earth Rising1

Among the many important issues addressed by contemporary European crime drama production, one can find the construction of collective and individual memory, oftentimes linked to major traumatic events of the twentieth century. This article focuses on Black Earth Rising, a UK production created by Hugo Blick. The series’ protagonist, Kate Ashby (Michaela Coel), is a legal investigator, orphaned during the 1994 Tutsi genocide in Rwanda and later adopted by a renowned British prosecutor in international criminal law. Black Earth Rising revolves around Kate’s investigations, which in turn lead her back to Rwanda, where she faces not only trauma and shadows of her childhood in Rwanda, but also the tragic violence that shaped the history of her country. Considering the relationship between memory, processing trauma and the crime genre, this article examines different aspects of Blick’s TV series. More precisely, the article explores the crime drama’s utilization of investigation as a narrative tool that guides the viewer through the history of the Rwandan genocide, the role of its female protagonist and the function of reoccurring black-and-white animated sequences. In this analysis, crime drama, in part due to its widespread popularity, is framed as an important tool that allows for the construction of shared space, in which mediated cultural encounters and collective memory can take place.

Language, European identity and stereotypical diversity in trans-European crime dramas

Interrogating two transnational television dramas – Crossing Lines (2013, 2014, 2015, the first season) and The Team (2015, 2018, the second season) – and employing critical, textual and production perspectives, this article investigates representations of national and European identity in the series. In this article, I argue that the series on the one hand picture a diverse Europe uniting when challenges arise, embodying the dominant European narrative of ‘unity in diversity’ and, seen from a certain point of view, facilitate a mediated cultural encounter. On the other hand, the diversity depicted is based on the use of a wide range of well-known cultural stereotypes that may be familiar to the audience, and which may facilitate smooth storytelling, but that does little to broaden the actual cultural knowledge and understanding of the viewer, resulting in stereotypical diversity. The series have different strategies regarding representations of nation states, cultures and languages. The implications of these strategies are analysed. Common ground is often found in ‘American’ crime drama genre tropes associated with a team of often-antagonistic specialists who are put together to solve a problem, including such iconic US series as The A-Team (1983–87), the CSI: Crime Scene Investigation franchise (2000–15) and Scorpion (2014, 2015, 2016, 2017). The contribution ultimately finds that meaningful mediated cultural encounters are a challenge to transnational television drama, and that when it comes to television, ‘European’ and ‘transnational’ means little without ‘national’.

“He was Drugged up on Something...” Portrayals of Drugs and Violence on Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) as System Justification

We conducted a content analysis of the first two and last two seasons of the popular crime drama Crime Scene Investigation ( CSI), to determine the extent to which depictions of the intersection of substance use and violence were consistent with research. Using the lens of system justification theory, we find that CSI focuses on aspects of crime that preserve the status quo, specifically it overemphasizes the negative impact of illicit substances as opposed to legal substances (such as alcohol), and it emphasizes the psychopharmacological role of drugs in violent crime compared to systemic violence related to the illegality of drug markets, even though research demonstrates that systemic violence makes up a large proportion of substance-related homicides. Despite significant changes in drug policy that occurred during the time that CSI was on the air, we find these portrayals are largely unchanged between episodes that were broadcast between 2000–2002 versus those that aired 2014–2015.

‘Aesthetic Proximity’ and Transnational TV Series

This article focuses on the short lived Turkish police procedural TV series, Cinayet (The Murder, Akbel Film and Adam Film, 2014) which is a scripted format adaptation of the celebrated Danish crime drama Forbrydelsen (DR, 2007-2012). By making a comparative textual analysis of the series, the article intends to emphasize the significance of ‘aesthetic proximity’ as a concept in discussing the global flow of television content and to reveal the challenges of adapting a scripted format which is stylistically different than the local stylistic conventions.

Reality Crime Programs in Turkish Television: The Notorious Case of Palu Family on Müge

The crime drama has always been popular on radio and television. Following this popular programming type, these programs found its way into reality crime programs. The reality crime programs emerged in U.S television in the late 1980s as the combination of news, crime dramas, and even horror genre. The reality crime programs placed themselves mainly in two formats in the television world. There is a vignette format where actors reenact actual crimes, and another one is the live-action format. It is the 1990s for Turkey to introduce reality television to the audience. One of the popular programs that were first broadcasted on ATV in 2008 hosted by Müge Anlı is the Müge Anlı ile Tatlı Sert. After we discuss the popularity of the reality crime television and the cases from American television, MATS is discussed as a certain criminal case from Turkey. This case is publicly recognized as Palu Family. This article argues how the case of the Palu Family became a televised public psychosis in MATS which is a hybrid reality crime program. With this regard, we will study family violence, sexual abuse, and homicide that have become publicly available to the audience. Keywords: reality TV, reality crime programs, infotainment, crime, Turkish television, Müge Anlı

Sex, corruption and killer heels: footwear in the Korean corporate crime drama

Focusing on Im Sang-soo’s The Taste of Money (2012), this chapter explores the interplay between gender, corporate corruption, age, nationhood and footwear. The film directly references a series of social and cultural debates that have taken place inside South Korea in the last decades, highlighting the sexual, class and ethnic tensions that exist inside the state. The chapter also examines the filmmaker’s 2010 film The Housemaid. Both films show how women are trapped between the neo-liberal agenda of defining the self and the desire/need to maintain a more traditional female narrative.