ABSTRACT
In her comprehensive analysis of the crime drama, Sue Turnbull (2014) identifies television series including Dexter (Showtime, 2006-13), Hannibal (NBC, 2013-), The X-Files (FOX, 1993-2002) and Profiler (NBC, 19962000), which possess a distinctive ‘“Gothic tone” and horror movie aesthetic’ (2014, p. 139). However, when she notes that the crime genre resembles a ‘primordial soup’ ‘that includes true crime, melodramatic plays, the detective story, the hard-boiled thriller, film noir, the semi-documentary feature film, the radio crime show, and the routine representations of crime in the news’ (2014, p. 42), the Gothic genre is notably absent. Indeed, there has been a tendency to overlook crime drama’s debt to the Gothic in favour of an inclination to ‘frame … crime television in terms of realism, emphasizing the ways in which the genre … deals with societal perceptions of crime, deviance and danger in a risk society’ (Tasker, 2011). Seeking to redress this apparent neglect, this chapter explores the generic hybrid of the Gothic crime drama through two recent British examples, ITV’s Whitechapel (2009-13) and BBC’s Ripper Street (2013-). Firstly, it outlines the key tropes of the Gothic crime drama, considering examples such as British shows Wire In The Blood (ITV, 2002-08), Cracker (ITV, 1993-96) and Waking the Dead (BBC, 2000-11) and the US-produced Criminal Minds (CBS, 2004-), Millennium (FOX, 1996-99), The X-Files (FOX, 1993-2002) and Hannibal (NBC, 2013-). These series engage differently with the Gothic; for example, The X-Files drew on Gothic tropes such as the tension between the supernatural and the ordinary, including the use of premonitions and possessions, and an unclear division between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ (Delasara, 2000, pp. 138-9), whilst the Gothic cop drama Millennium emphasised the contested Gothic space of the home alongside these other tropes (Wheatley, 2006, p. 189). American police procedurals such as Criminal Minds and British crime dramas including Waking the Dead and Wire In The Blood share a Gothic aesthetic and have deployed the ‘widespread use of macabre, Gothic imagery – particularly the low key lighting and expressionist aesthetic associated with gothic film’ (Tasker, 2011).
