ABSTRACT
One of the longest-standing debates in crime fiction, both literary and televisual, has been the degree to which writers accurately capture the actual procedures of police investigations. This emphasis on authentic detail and expert insight is normally realised through research, occasionally through first-hand knowledge, and more commonly through employing expert police advisors to the production. There is valuable cultural capital to be gained by a production in making such investments, not least as they ground the genre’s claims to realism and the privileged insights it seems to offer viewers of a world largely unknown to law-abiding citizens. The origin narratives of police series as diverse as Cagney and Lacey (CBS, 1982-88), Prime Suspect (Granada for ITV, 1991-2006), The Wire (HBO, 2002-08) and Z-Cars (ITV, 1962-78) all include the role real-life police stories and officers have played in inspiring realist fiction, and it is the highly mediated relationship
with the truth of crime and policing which the subgenre and its viewers negotiate. So pervasive are these accounts that we need to understand them as an integral hallmark of the police procedural’s own production values, providing supporting evidence for the subgenre’s claim to privileged insight to the working of those who have the power to arrest citizens and detain them behind bars. Furthermore, this ‘know-how’ marks out this form of the crime drama from other, more fanciful, examples including the numerous adaptations of Agatha Christie’s crime fiction involving amateur sleuths whose quirky personalities and clever instincts, rather than professionalism, lead them to reveal the truth of whodunnit.
