Delightful murder and the fascinating forensics….

It was Splintered Sunrise mentioning the Journal of Forensic Sciences, which does sound fascinating, by the way, that focused my attention to crime dramas on television. I am a sucker for the old crime-show procedurals.

Crime does seem to pay and has become very financially lucrative and a popular subject for the telly ratings, I mean, I think the original CSIfranchise from the Bruckheimer stable is one of the most popular shows on American television. And I seem to gravitate on a regular basis towards Channel 5.

Programmes such as CSI: Las Vegas is a fascinating and creative specimen, as opposed to a “whodunnit” it’s a “howdunnit”…

The science comes across as cool and hip and kinda is the main attraction (the “wow….that’s amazing..” factor) along with Gil Grissom. But what attracts me to the original CSI other than it’s innovation and originality is the independent strong feisty women characters such as Catherine Willows and Sara Sidle (who I miss….), I find them much more compelling and interesting than the women in CSI: Miami and New York.

It’s glossy, slick and fast paced but it still engages me. I am totally flummoxed why I like NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigative Service…says it all!), the politics are dodgy and highly suspect (gawd bless America..) but I suppose what pulls me in is the banter and camaraderie between the characters and especially gizmo goth woman and high-tech science supremo, Abby, along with her addiction to caffeine and the wisecracking, painstakingly putting the evidence together while making it look so simple and solving the “crime”. Oh, and not forgetting the pathologist “Ducky” (to anyone old enough he played Illya Kuryakin in The Man from U.N.C.L.E) with his own quirks and foibles.

Yeah, it is not about anything spectacularly cerebral or challenging but it is about entertainment and entertainment with a bit of a kick. Oh, and talking of franchises, this one from Dick Wolf, leads me to Law and Order (I miss Jerry Orbach) and again, they are all watchable but my favourite (even if the politics are utterly right-wing along with the ethical/moral conundrums of the criminal justice system) is Law and Order: Criminal Intent.

And probably that is to do with the pedantic Detective Goren, who is dogged and steadfast in working out the “why” along with “who” (the viewer sometimes knows already). What I like about Goran is that he’s flawed and has been affected by life. He is a latter day Sherlock Holmes while Eames, his co-worker, is a doctor Watson, much more laid back and adds the humour. She acts as a counter-balance to the melancholic Goren.

These series I have mentioned may project strong independent women but they are still in the background while the central characters are predominantly male. This still reflects the accepted gender roles and expectations as opposed to thinking outside the prescribed gender box. But, cynically, with Hollywood it would be based on whether it would sell and profitability…

Anyway….finally, I really would like to flag up another series (and yeah, with a male central character) that I ended up rather liking and that’s Dexter (based on the Jeff Lindsay novels). Dexter, macabrely, is a blood splatter analyst by day (who sometimes has to check out his own crime scenes!) and a serial killer by night (and there are some comedic elements..).

You know there has to be some hidden trauma waiting to escape from Dexter’s psyche and bits and pieces are revealed of Dexter’s past, including his Larkinsque childhood.  There’s also Dexter’s own perception of his behaviour and why he does what he does, his logic is that he constructively channels his violence into killing people who “deserve it”. I originally thought it was too plodding but after a bit I became interested in Dexter’s cold and unfeeling character (the text book label of psychopath applies), the so-called “normal” bloke by day and murderer by night and how he tries keeps those two worlds separate. But there’s the inevitable clashes and collisions between these two worlds. I also like his monotonous voice overs as well.

Yeah, it is cod psychology with a rather reductionist view on good and bad. But sometimes it strays beyond the boundaries and looks at how complicated life is. It’s not intellectually stimulating it’s plain old entertainment with a storyline, script, good acting and snappy dialogue (but there’s time it can get too turgid).

Ernest Mandel once wrote about people who may believe that analysing crime stories is “frivolous”, he also argued, “I can only offer this final apology: historical materialism can -and should-be applied to all social phenomena. None is by nature less worthy of study than others. The majesty of this theory – and the proof of its validity- is precisely in its ability to explain them all”…(Delightful Murder: a social history of the crime story)

And that’s certainly my position on this subject…..

Oh, and because I don’t have cable I’ve never watched The Wire. How remiss…..