Detective Drama Tropes you Wish they'd skip

[Kreepture]

Been watching all the Morse, Lewis, Endeavour, Frost..etc series on ITV x recently, and i've spotted a few tropes they like to use, but there's a couple i'm really fed up of.

1. The new love interest turning out to be the killer/bad guy

2. Families of the dead refusing to answer perfectly reasonable questions/being hostile.

They start riffling through the suspects office, open the filing cabinet and immediately find the correct file, log into the computer with just a few clicks and manage to find the right info straightaway

LOL - it’s just lazy back story development in a industry (and crime genre esp) that until the last decade or so was dominated by male writers who couldn’t be bothered to consider the rich and varied reasons for [male] psychopathy and criminality… nah, just make the mum absent, alcoholic, negligent or she could even have the audacity to die in childbirth! That last one will do nicely, condemned by her failure to survive and raise her wee boy. Plus centuries of conditioning women to believe that everything is their fault. Freud didn’t help much either.

Could chunter on about that one for ever…

I first started noticing them a few years ago, and they crop up everywhere. There must be a props warehouse somewhere that's full of the things.

Any body of water of any size (anywhere between a bath and the North Sea) will have a corpse in it.

Detective Superintendent do not do their own house to house enquiries during murder investigations. Looking at you, Roy Grace.

Aye, therrre’s bin a murrrda!

The brilliant but alcoholic detective.

Midsummer?

One of the characters will be shifty when the police question them and will immediately phone someone else the minute they leave to say the police are “sniffing around”. This will have nothing to do with the murder but some other petty crime they are involved in.

The harassed female detective who works 16 hours a day will have a sister or mother with no life of their own who looks after her children. When the detective finally gets home to argue with her stroppy children because she missed their really important school thing mom/sis will tell them they’ve popped a casserole in the oven as they put their jacket on. As soon as they leave the detective will pour herself a glass of wine, flop onto the sofa and put her feet up on the coffee table.

Yes because any attempt to criticise women - and mother’s especially - is an essential component of crime fiction and drama. Which, coincidentally is primarily purchased and viewed by women (more than 65% of crime fiction books are purchased by women aged 30-65; viewing demographics for crime drama and real crime both in UK and US are similar).

So it’s served up to women who subconsciously imbibe the maternal guilt narrative and so the cycle begins again…

the way around it is when female characters, like Jane Tennyson and Vera Stanhope, break those molds. By being, in effect, male archetypes (unmarried, alcoholic, promiscuous/sexless, childless with no maternal - thus redeeming - qualities whatsoever). So women in crime fiction/drama are damned if they are mothers and damned if they aren’t.

This! Yes, it's SO annoying!

Or maybe stalkers target clueless people in these dramas because they can’t be bothered with someone who keeps their curtains closed

and when the stalker is watching, the person inside suddenly gets a feeling and looks out and then closes the curtain

And if it happens to be a harassed MALE detective who has missed some important event related to his children (or failed to deal with the child's unhappiness), he is a divorced dad, absent from the children's home, and the mother of the child (properly attentive to the children because that is all she is for in the story) scolds him.

The story can thereby pride itself on feministly representing her as a hardworking and hard-done-by mum, but it also works in a misogynistic harrumph by positioning her as the brake and confinement of Our Hero's struggling destiny.

When the detectives go to "have a few words" with someone connected to the case at their home, and there's a whole scene of them knocking at the door, getting no answer, nosying around the location without finding anything, etc. Clearly this person is going to be the culprit, otherwise that scene never would have been there - thanks a lot, writers! (Looking at you Dept Q)

Ludwig was hilarious for this. The police station looked like a newly built library where they haven't moved the bookshelves in yet. About six people dotted around, pretending to look busy while David Mitchell pulled out an increasingly elaborate series of display boards - I think the final one was about eight feet wide

The divorced wives all seem to remarry lovely functional men who are amazing partners and stepdad, often financially very successful too. No blended family issues. Which, as we know from MN, ALWAYS happens in real life.

Yes, if there's a really well-known actor in a drama you know they're not going to get bumped off in the first five minutes.

But don’t forget the ex wife is exceedingly tolerant of her ex and his crapiness because she still loves him and they only divorced because he wouldn’t compromise on his lifestyle (alcohol and obsessional police work)

sometimes they end up sleeping together and the faithful puppy like new husband is shown crestfallen as he understands he will never fully have her heart

I found another. If they're creeping around an apparently empty building looking for someone, said someone will invariably smack them on the back of the head with a handy random object and knock them out.

I thought this, but I did see a couple of episodes of Lewis where they bumped the famous actor off in the first 15 minutes. I was shocked!

That is surprising! It's usually quite a reliable predictor.

The criminal/victim being an old friend or a relative or a former colleague of the detective.

Always a sign the writers have run out of ideas IMO.

Detective coming back to home town after many years away and immediately getting embroiled in a murder case, usually involving someone they know, either as the victim or perpetrator. And of course there’s all the baggage of awkward family relationships and old boyfriends/girlfriends etc - usually the reason they left in the first place😆

Detective being overlooked for a nailed on certainty of a promotion. Detective then hates/doesn’t get along with their new boss. Lots of clashes due to different methodologies. But they finally come together to solve the crime and each realises the other is actually ok and a grudging mutual respect evolves.

And a strangely high proportion of the characters live in lovely, very modern houses (although often dimly lit).

Yes. Almost no one lives in a regular 3 bed semi. Either beautiful super modern, a Victorian villa with an in-out drive or tiny terrace /small flat.