ABSTRACT
In the 2010s a cycle of television (TV) crime drama has emerged that self-reflexively challenges long-entrenched conventions of the genre, while simultaneously augmenting the styles and forms associated with Quality TV. This chapter explores recent Quality crime dramas signal their break from the dominant crime drama forms on early 2000s broadcast TV by defying the conventions of these shows—in particular the logical processes of criminal investigation central to their narrative structures. These 2010s programs often interrupt the forensic procedural structure with highly stylized, surreal aesthetics and avant-garde formal devices. These shows include crime dramas produced and distributed across cable, broadcast, and subscription-video-on-demand platforms, including True Detective, The Sinner, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, Dark, and Hannibal, as well as David Lynch and Mark Frost’s revival of their early 1990s program Twin Peaks, Twin Peaks: The Return, the release of which capitalizes on the appetite in the 2010s for surreal-inflected crime dramas.
