by Ben Lamb, reviewed by Mareike Jenner

Excerpt: “Each chapter covers a decade within the genre, starting in the 1950s and 1960s and ending with the 2010s. Every chapter covers production contexts before moving on to explore some of the most popular texts of that decade in more detail. Methodologically, the book focuses on the series’ visual grammar. It does so by exploring the police station – with its depiction and framing of institutional hierarchies – and the police’s relationship to the public. It then moves on to explore the domestic spaces of witnesses, suspects or victims and those of the detectives, with a view on gender relations, meaning the role of gender in investigations as well as its shifting role within UK society. Trends in criminology, which influence policy as well as public debate, are mapped onto these representations to explore contemporary ideologies of crime, society, and crime fighting.” Read full review here

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