ABSTRACT
The crime drama, he notes, was employed by the major American networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) as both a secure base from which mainstream appeal could occur, whilst also functioning as a malleable form that was highly adaptable to the increasing aim of niche-targeting commercially salient audiences. Whilst exploring overlapping ideas concerning the TV crime genre, this chapter considers a different national context and area of production by analysing how the UK broadcaster, ITV – a network which ‘has often been marginalised or neglected’ (Johnson and Turnock, 2005, p. 1) in British TV Studies – discursively uses the crime drama for its contemporaneous channel branding purposes. Responding to Jason Mittell’s (2004, p. 14) calls for examining genre categories ‘from the bottom up, by collecting microinstances of generic discourses in historically-specific moments’, the chapter analyses two examples of material used to brand the ITV channel. These are ITV’s Winter 2013 drama trailer, which is one iteration of the channel’s continuing ‘Where Drama Lives’ campaign, and a widely disseminated poster image promoting the first series of Broadchurch (ITV, 2013-), ITV’s critically acclaimed crime drama which debuted in March 2013. By analysing this promotional material, two core arguments arise: firstly, ITV consistently gives high visibility to crime dramas but this publicity material continuously negotiates ongoing value judgements between celebrated ‘realist’ and disparaged ‘melodramatic’ discourses when marketing the channel to different
imagined audiences. Secondly, ITV’s construction of crime dramas within its channel branding demonstrates what I have named ‘self-reflexive anxieties’ concerning both the genre’s cultural status and ITV’s contributions to its heritage. Whilst crime series are consistently employed as signifiers of the channel’s mainstream appeal, genre-specific meanings are always enhanced through being layered with appeals to additional audience segments.
