A Study of the Thriller through TV

British topographical touring / noir / or just some good stuff to watch

The Saturday Brunch: a figurative flat white or fizzy to start your weekend

Photo by Adrien Olichon on Unsplash

Welcome! If you’re new here, I’m Kathleen Waller and this is my newsletter about cultural studies, the arts, and writing. Last week, I took a look at thriller books, which you might want to check out before reading this post.

Thrillers for Lovers of Literary Fiction

Now, time for TV…

If you like detective shows or crime drama, and you haven’t been watching British television, you have been missing out! Calling this post a “study” might be a stretch. However, I wanted to highlight a few of the television series I enjoy in the UK.

I’m working on the final touches of my Vienna-based thriller manuscript. In addition to their whodunnit entertainment value, these shows are inspiration (and procrastination) for my current writing project due to their mise-en-scène (think cliff-lined beaches and little towns where everyone is connected) as well as their layered characters, often witty and always with some dark secrets. In fact, the detectives themselves are often connected to the crime or criminal. Fun.

Of course, they’re not the only ones who do it well. Scandinavian series like The Bridge and The Killing are phenomenal and have a lot of similar topographical features like the British shows. The Pennsylvania based show Mare of Easttown (although starring British actress Kate Winslet) had the kind of deep character dive that many in the UK excel at.

I also love the accents, idioms, and local slang! Don’t be afraid to turn on the subtitles, even if English is your mother tongue. I usually do.

I’ll highlight four of my favorites here, but please add to the list!

Happy Valley (2014-2023)

Although detective fiction got its start in the 1800s due to the Industrial Revolution, urbanization, and crime (in the cities), smaller towns can echo the difficulty of the times in a more intimate setting. Happy Valley is set now and draws on Britain’s sharp economic decline since Brexit as well as issues relating more specifically to the current drug crisis.

We witness moments of violence and terror, often fearing the safety of the characters we have come to love. But as Stuart Heritage writes for The Guardian in “Graffiti, grammar and farts: how small moments make Happy Valley an all-time great,” there are many “warm human moments” such as this one:

The best example of this is the line about stew. A moment of television so perfect it should be cordoned off and independently handed as many awards as possible. Catherine spends the scene trying to explain to Ryan that Royce – his biological father – is a psychopath of limitless evil. “He has a kink in his brain,” she tells him. “A twist, a psychological deformity. It’s an absence of something.” Eventually, Ryan tells her his tea is getting cold. She asks what it is. “Stew,” replies Ryan. And Catherine, as she tries to stop the person she loves most in the world from sliding towards evil, stops to consider the reheatability of his tea. “That’ll be alright,” she sniffs.

Sarah Lancashire, who plays the main character — a detective whose daughter dies before the first episode due to addiction and the influence of her nemesis, a criminal named Tommy Lee Royce — is an amazingly nuanced character who keeps surprising us.

The show’s creator, Sally Wainwright, is also the writer for Gentleman Jack and Last Tango in Halifax. Following many accolades and awards, some have called the finale for this show a “perfect ending.”

Shetland (2013— )

DJ Jimmy Perez has starred in eight seasons of this crime drama set in the Shetland Islands. A place known for those hiding out and witness protection as well as small towns, ferries to Norway, rough coastlines, and eerie foggy mornings make it a wonderful place for this show. The Guardian writes: “Shetland shares a lot of the spare, bleak beauty of Scandinavian noir – even when the sun shines, the characters seek out shadows in which to hold conversations.” These stories are adapted from Ann Cleeves’ detective novels.

Our detective is again a complicated character, often with relatives and friends tied up in the crimes. The FT writes that his character is: “rumpled, weary, lakes of loneliness in his eyes — played by Douglas Henshall with infinite melancholia.” I’m not sure how this show will be without him, but his deputy always added a bit of humor and strength when he needed it. Hopefully she will be taking the reigns after his retirement.

Broadchurch (2013-2017)

Broadchurch stars David Tennant and Olivia Coleman in three captivating seasons. With two such brilliant actors, it seems impossible to mess up. When you add the setting of a fictional town in Dorset…with cliffs, small town creepiness, and the beautiful luminous sea, one can’t go wrong.

Photo of Dorset by Matt Cannon on Unsplash

Broadchurch has also since been widely streamed in America and elsewhere, so probably many of you non-Brits have heard of it or seen it.

In an interview with The New York Times, Tennant discusses why he thinks the series was unique and successful:

Very often in television crime dramas, for very obvious and often quite legitimate reasons, you don’t really feel the genuine impact of what crime does to the victim and those around it. In “Broadchurch,” you can taste the grief and the horror and the extraordinariness of this random ghastly event happening to these people. It just felt electrifyingly real. And [Alec Hardy] is a great character — he’s noble, inscrutable and rather taciturn.

A few other shows that take place near the sea are also worth a try. Something about this setting makes for deep reflection, as if the characters are born of the wild ocean itself. The Bay (2019—) is set on the coast of Moracombe Bay, near the real life home of Tyson Fury and a beautiful place to visit at the edge of the Lake District. While at first the main detective has a ridiculous storyline, the second and third seasons get a lot better; I was rooting for her. And then a few good ones take place in Wales, such as Hinterland and Hidden.

Endeavour (2012-2023)

Endeavor is a prequel show to Inspector Morse (1987-2000, based on the novels by Colin Dexter) set in Oxford in the 1960s, currently in its ninth season on BBC. Oxford is not tiny by any means, but the nature of the ‘college town’ where people are interconnected and town/gown relations can be tense, especially during a decade of change, makes for a dynamic setting. In the current season, tension between a seemingly more protected Oxford and Big City (Thug) Life of London builds when an ongoing subplot creates questions about one of the shows main characters.

Young Endeavor (Shaun Evans) is smart, often annoyingly so, and has the typical detective burden of loneliness. He reaches some pretty low points, as does his partner, played by Roger Allam. But a kind of alternative family is likewise formed and even tragedy compels them to do good in the community.

I have yet to see the original series and am told by my British husband that it is rather ‘dated.’ But I shall give it a try! Anybody here?

Allam has recently gone on to play in a British detective show called Murder in Provence (2022—) set in France, where he plays a French person. I find it annoying that the show is in English! The stories are so-so so far. But maybe it will get better.

In any case, I like watching things set in France, ideally in French, simply because of my Francophilia. Recently, I watched the French detective show César Wagner (2020-2022), set in Strasbourg. As I’ve spent a bit of time there since moving to Basel, it was fun to check out some local places and the local accent in this way. Again, the plot-lines are not especially compelling, but they are entertaining enough with quite a bit of humor peppered along the way.

In more urban British settings, In the Line of Duty, Unforgotten, and (J.K. Rowling’s) C.B. Strike are also great shows.

Why do we (I) enjoy watching a murder mystery or detective drama anyway? Psychology Today explores this question; don’t worry, they conclude it’s totally normal to enjoy watching it! [Nervous laughter…] However, this article from the UK University of Law condenses my thoughts on the matter, even though they are talking about ‘true crime’ stories:

[Watching crime on television] feeds our natural desire to solve puzzles and mysteries. It also gives us an insight into why other people may act the way they do and allows us to examine the darker sides of humanity from a safe distance.

I think one can do this in any fiction. I have always enjoyed writing that takes us into labyrinths (Borges, Auster, Ali Smith…), and these UK series offer more than the question of the crime’s complexities itself; instead asking us to piece together why and how we react to place/trauma/ambiguity/evil in the manifestation of the layered detectives.