Don't think this comes from nowhere
Move over, Morse: female TV detectives are on the case now.
And, well, yay, but I have various cavils about that article.
One of which is, there's quite a long tradition of more or less dysfunctional/damaged male detectives - Lord Peter with his shellshock, anyone? - and I'm pretty sure I've seen comments about the recurrent motif of male leads in TV crime series who have drink/family/marriage/psychiatric issues problems beyond the stresses of the job. So really: Fictional male detectives in the past have often been robust figures of competence, standing at the centre of the plot, from where they make sense of the incomprehensible, turn chaos into order, join up the clues to find the criminal, restore normality.
No, really - I can think of enough exceptions to that rule (especially if we bring into the equation questions about competence in other fields than crime-solving, like, oh, normal social interaction, maintaining relationships, etc) that says that's a very dubious generalisation.
Plus, maybe this is a new thing on TV (though if we are going back to Prime Suspect even if not invoking Cagney and Lacey, not all that new, surely?) but doesn't it build on a significant trend in written crime/mystery/thriller fiction towards women protags who were neither Miss Marple nor Modesty Blaise? This entry was originally posted at http://oursin.dreamwidth.org/2161337.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View
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