Crime writers on why we so love TV police dramas
Few TV shows have brought more intrigue and spectacle than Line of Duty over the last ten years. This coming Sunday’s season six finale promises to top opening episode’s 9.6 million viewers for what is officially the world’s seventh most bingeable box set .
The UK’s love affair with crime shows can be traced back to the 1950s when shows like Interpol Calling and Big Guns were a treat for those with a TV set.
TV writer Jake Riddell and director Matthew Evans reveal the key ingredients behind a hit police drama.
Jake, who worked as a story producer for The Bill, as well as writing 12 episodes for the hit ITV police show, said cop dramas have always had a huge appeal to UK TV audiences. “It all goes back to Dixon of Dock Green, where a show provided a sense of security and comfort to an audience.”
The BBC’s Dixon of Dock Green ran for 22 series. Starring Constable George Dixon, the show focused on a typical ‘bobby’ cop, giving audiences a character to relate to.
While crime dramas are now known for intense storylines, it may not be the big explosions and terror situations that keep the audience engaged - rather the problem solvers within the carnage.
“Detectives bring order out of chaos, it’s very Shakespearean in that way,” Riddell explained. “The equilibrium is upset, someone is murdered. The heroes and heroines work through the complexity of the chaos, then bring order by arresting the right perpetrator at the end. It’s a catharsis people enjoy, that’s universal.
“There is a particular format for a decent mystery/ police show. You put out your suspects. You will misdirect the audience to think it’s one person, when in fact they are acting suspiciously for another reason that you uncover, and then they serve a different role as a witness or a victim - and give you another part of the puzzle.”
Riddell, who has also written for BBC cop show, Death in Paradise, said TV crime showwritersmakeitlookso simple, when in reality, it’s a very tough task.
“You have to try and create a Rubik’s cube of mystery that allows an audience to keep guessing for 55 minutes, until it ends and they go ‘yeah I knew it was him’.”
TV director Matthew Evans, who has worked behind the camera on Rebus, The Bill, and Silent Witness, said that good crime shows present an opportunity for audiences to enter a problem right from the off.
Evans said that as a director you “want to take stories to the point where the audience will think that’s where they are going - then you make it uncomfortable for them...and continue to make them truly uncomfortable, creating that feeling of ‘anything can happen’.”
Praising Jed Mercurio’s work on Line of Duty, both Evans and Riddell note that tension has made that show such a success: “Line of Duty is so good because you think you’re on a set of rails, then suddenly you’re not even on a train,” Evans said.
Audiences search for answers through crime dramas because they are obsessed with understanding the concept of truth, Evans believes: “Cop dramas have this amazing ability to jimi open the bits in us that we are uncomfortable with.
“When a character walks in a room expecting one set of outcomes and something completely different happens - that gap fascinates me. Within that gap, the character has a choice. Their choices make the audience understand why the story works. The moments where characters are confronted with massively unexpected events, and how they deal with them, are things we are fascinated by,” he believes.
It makes for uncomfortable but unforgettable momentsonTV.