One Person’s Guide to Watching Murder Mysteries on Television
One Person’s Guide to Watching Murder Mysteries on Television
One Man’s Guide to Watching Murder Mysteries on Television
It is so interesting how one market closes because of a crisis, and another market opens up so quickly because of that same crisis. The media…..all media…is filled with warnings about contracting the corona virus. When I was eleven, I and my eleven year old friends, using our best medical jargon, would have referred to this situation as “contracting the cooties.” So because we can’t “do this” or can’t “do that,” we have a new set of media telling us what we can do. What we can do to unburden our solitary confinement. See? Another market. And in that market are all sorts of ideas about how to keep your body fit (buy a six zillion dollar treadmill) and your mind sharp. I cannot afford six zillion dollars, so I settle for a walk around the block and my one jumping jack a week which I religiously adhere to.
As for keeping the mind sharp…We read through the newspaper every morning, improving our synapses by mastering the Jumble, and we read our books…a lot. But the activity that most improves our neural pathways is watching several crime dramas on television simultaneously. Keeping all those plots and characters straight is really mentally taxing. And a number of those shows are foreign programs, mysteries from Sweden and Denmark and Iceland and Scotland, shows that demand you read subtitles. Here is a short list of what I am writing about: Broadchurch, Trapped, Ozark, Bloodline, Bodyguard, Jack Taylor, Bordertown, Wallander, The Killing, Marcella, Luther, Hinterland, Bosch to name a few. Sometimes when a detail shot of an Icelandic newspaper headline is displayed, we forget to look at the subtitle and try to read the Icelandic headline, as if by staring hard enough we can read Icelandic. Quite challenging. Always keep the remote near so you can reverse the streaming and read the subtitle.
Still, it gets confusing. “What happened to the guy with the eye patch and rotten teeth?”
“That’s not this show. You are thinking of the guy in the Swedish mystery.”
“Oh.”
“Wait. Isn’t he married to the redhead who is a lesbian police chief?”
“No. You are thinking of the captain of the Nardick fishing boat in Trapped.”
“Oh.”
“Stop. I thought his daughter was in uni in London?”
“No. The daughter in uni in London studying origami is in the show where the priest is the brother of the one legged serial killer.”
“Oh.”
So, as part of that market trying to help us get through the cooties, I am offering a guide to watching these shows. Think of it as sort of a Venn diagram, where I am focusing on all the common elements of these mysteries. I am including Law and Order as the distinctive element of this diagram.
What All These Shows Have in Common:
Backstories All these dramas have backstories, and these backstories are based on shady histories that are slowly revealed as the series progresses. I call these Backstory Skeletons. The lead detective once had an affair with the Chief of Police, or is divorced from the Chief of Police or in third grade played Spin the Bottle with the Chief of Police. If the Chief of Police is the protagonist, then the backstory is predicated on he/she having an affair with the district attorney or the mayor or the medical examiner. Sometimes, in the worst of these shows, the Backstory Skeleton consumes too much time, and we forget about the actual crime they are trying to solve.
Law and Order, distinctively, has backstories, but they are rarely in the foreground of the episode. Yes, Lennie has a drug addicted daughter and Jack McCoy and Claire have this affair going on but it is only referred to by raised eyebrows and winks. Their background stories never interfere with nailing the villain du jour.
Protagonist Angst All the protagonists suffer from some sort of psychological crippling that causes them to never smile. They could be in a theater listening to a stand up comedian or at home watching Funniest Home Videos, or they could be tickled with a giant feather held by a circus clown, and a yuk or a chuckle never escapes them. This angst is borne from guilt at something they did or should have done or not done. They feel responsible for the death of a spouse or a child or a case unsolved or a colleague killed in the line of duty, a marriage they screwed up or a parent they disappointed. They manifest this angst usually by drowning their liver in alcohol. The Scandinavian mysteries are particularly fond of demonstrating this protagonist anguish by filming the anti-hero staring into the vastness of the ocean for about twenty minutes. And most of the protagonists are “rogue” crime fighters. They have done something which makes them a societal pariah.
In Law and Order, distinctively, Lennie and his fellow detectives never stare. They act.
Medical Examiner/Technician The shows always showcase a medical examiner who can place a charred bit of fingernail under a microscope and genetically reproduce the DNA of the suspect. Or there is a character with extreme high tech knowledge who can recover a conversation from the broken bits of a cell phone that has been smashed with a sledge hammer and deposited in acid for a month.
In Law and Order medical examiner Leslie Hendrix has that New York City sarcastic, no nonsense edge. She can dissect a body while munching on a ham sandwich.
Eating In all these crime dramas we never see the major characters eat. The protagonists may sit in a diner or a fancy restaurant but a fork of food is never lifted to their mouths. I imagine they do not want any solids to absorb the gallons of liquor they have imbibed. And whatever food fare is offered seems unappealing to me—sheep’s head, boiled herring, shark liver.
In Law and Order there are always scenes of Lennie wolfing down pizza or Jack and Claire using chopsticks to stuff their faces with a Chinese takeout lunch or Steven Hill munching on a chicken salad sandwich in his office while he and Jack and Claire decide whether or not to seek the death penalty. And there are scenes in fancy dining establishments with plates of prime rib and grouper and steak being consumed. Watching this crime drama often inspires me to check the fridge.
Cell Phones Cell phones always work in the modern crime dramas. The protagonist can be at the bottom of a mine shaft, one hundred miles below the earth’s mantle with ten thousand tons of lead between him and the surface, and he can still use his cell to phone his assistant to see if the results of the fingerprinting are in. At times my cell can’t call Polley in the next room.
In Law and Order only the assistant detectives (Ray Curtis, Ed Green, and Chris Noth) use cell phones.
No Backups In these modern crime shows, the protagonist never calls for backup when he or she discovers the whereabouts of the gang’s hideout. The hero and his Robin know that inside this one building are two hundred bad guys armed to the teeth with AK-47’s, hand grenades, bazookas and the odd nuclear device, but they never wait for backup. “Robin, go back to the car and radio the station and tell them our location and send backup.”
“But you can’t go in there by yourself!”
“We can’t wait. I’m going in!”
Most of the law enforcement officers in the Scandinavian dramas do not carry weapons, so I suppose they burst into the villain’s den of iniquity prepared to stare them into compliance.
In Law and Order the detectives ALWAYS call for backup and usually follow SWAT teams while wearing ten inch protective vests into apartments harboring one guy with a Derringer.
Clothing From watching modern murder mysteries it appears that there are no dress codes. The female detectives often dress in what I would describe as frumpy fraulein. The male detectives wear apparel that indicates they are going undercover as a homeless person in a slum neighborhood. I find it difficult to discern the law enforcement people from the smarmy bad guys when both types wear the same clothing.
In Law and Order, three piece suits and snappy women’s clothing is the norm, except when Jack McCoy sports his 1950’s boyhood chapeau with ear flaps.
Bad Daughters Who Do Stupid Things and Good Daughters Who Do Stupid Things I originally thought this essential ingredient of these crime series was particular to the ones produced in Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and Denmark. You know. The cultures in those countries let their kids roam free and wild at about the age of twelve. But our American and British dramas follow the same pattern. There are the annoying rebellious daughters who do exactly the opposite of what their parents tell them.
“Whatever you do Broomhilda, do not visit the herring factory at night. Five girls your age have already been found strangled there.”
“YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO! I AM NOT A CHILD…..now can I have the keys to the car? I need to buy some herring.”
These bad daughters are so annoying that I want to reach through the television and throttle the little creeps.
The good daughters are almost as annoying, but are more forgiving because of their naivete. The good daughter falls in love with the rapist and serial killer her parent is tracking down, and the daughter believes she can convert her new boyfriend to goodness and convince him to join a Benedictine monastery.
What the bad daughters and good daughters have in common is that both types will eventually be kidnapped by the evil doers, and, of course, rescued in the nick of time…only to annoy us in another season. When the bad daughters are kidnapped, I have been known to be more empathetic with the villains. Sociologists or psychologists or anthropologists or any other “ologists” probably have a better understanding of why this Dark Daughter of Modern Crime Drama is a staple of the genre, but I could easily do without this addition.
In Law and Order, all family members are very tangential, virtually invisible. Lennie Briscoe has two daughters. One is seen in one or two episodes and the other is killed off in another but that is about it.
So if you have read Tristram Shandy, all nine volumes, for the seventh time, knitted the fifty scarves you are gifting next Christmas, and completed the Book of 1,000 Sudokus, stream the crime dramas available in your area. Watch three or four different shows in the same day, and using my guidelines, you will be able to follow them all without much difficulty. If you get bored with their sameness, there is always Law and Order.