Amazing Resource to Help With Planning

8/3/2019 Amazing Resource to Help With Planning

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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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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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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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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

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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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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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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

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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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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

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