ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an international comparison between three popular TV detective programmes from different language regions in Europe. Selected are those TV detectives that have motivated the highest numbers of new tourists in their respective language regions: Inspector Morse, Wallander and Baantjer. The Inspector Morse series, produced by British ITV, developed an international reputation as a model of quality television. Baantjer was the most-watched TV series of the past decade in the Netherlands, and it has also been broadcast in Belgium and France. The detectives in Inspector Morse, Baantjer and Wallander are always on the go, travelling from suspect to police station to pub to the next suspect. The police investigation appears, in other words, as an unending movement through the narrative space. In this way, the TV detective programme shows a strong similarity to a certain kind of tourism. Finally, TV detective programmes are characterized by an obsession with the physical.
