Mothers, don't let your daughters marry main characters in detective fiction
I just finished watching the BBC 1 show New Tricks, a fairly light-hearted series about three retired police officers called back to form a team that solves unsolved cases. As common as these “we're-the-unsolved-case-squad-nobody-knew-how-to-solve-crimes-before-the-year-2000” shows are now, New Tricks offers enough of a difference to keep me intrigued. However, due in no small part to too much time spent reading the TV Tropes wiki, I now have something of an eye for tropes and cliches on television.
One I noticed on New Tricks was that old policemen have to have dead wives. It happened to Jack Halford on New Tricks, it happened to Lewis' wife (I was watching Lewis earlier today and the fact that both he and Halford lost their wives in unsolved hit and runs is probably what tipped me off) and Jack Frost lost his wife to illness. In fact, I think having no living relatives is a job requirement if you want to run a CSI lab.
Bonus points are awarded if:
a) the copper's wife was killed before the series started
b) she was killed in any kind of unsolved case that the detective solves during the series
c) the detective has no children or they are rarely seen during the series
d) the detective's marital status is the first thing brought up by anyone who meets them for at least the first two series
I was just discussing this briefly with my Dad and he added George Carter of The Sweeney (also a hit and run, though one that apparently took place during the series) and George Gently (can't find a decent link) to the pile of crime-solving widowers.
Since a lot of these kinds of shows tend to focus largely on the cases from episode to episode, it's a fairly simple way to generate some sympathy for the main character without the need for additional actors to crop up once an episode. It's not unlike Disney parent syndrome, where in a kid-focused Disney movie only one parent, sometimes even just one grandparent or older sibling, will be shown with little more than a one-liner about emigration to explain the other guardians absence, and that's if your lucky.
The general principle is, if they're not absolutely necessary to the plot, they're not in the film, but the dead wives are often far more of a plot point than missing parents. Unless the police show has a case involving a missing parent, in which case the missing parent is the main point and the dead wife is a secondary point that's often brought up with the spouse of the missing parent.
Anyway, that's all I've got for tonight. Thank god for trope-ridden police procedurals or I'd have had nothing to write about.
Also, as a side note, here are some links to a Dead Ringers parody of Waking the Dead and another parody of Life on Mars, in which they point out that if they keep solving all their cases in the seventies, all those cold case squads will have nothing to do in 30 years time.
Another quick side note. Look below to see Skippy's first post in a while. I fear that this post has disguised his and I only realised it was there when I scrolled past the bottom of my post to find that little Photoshop job. Also, just call them lore gamers.
One I noticed on New Tricks was that old policemen have to have dead wives. It happened to Jack Halford on New Tricks, it happened to Lewis' wife (I was watching Lewis earlier today and the fact that both he and Halford lost their wives in unsolved hit and runs is probably what tipped me off) and Jack Frost lost his wife to illness. In fact, I think having no living relatives is a job requirement if you want to run a CSI lab.
Bonus points are awarded if:
a) the copper's wife was killed before the series started
b) she was killed in any kind of unsolved case that the detective solves during the series
c) the detective has no children or they are rarely seen during the series
d) the detective's marital status is the first thing brought up by anyone who meets them for at least the first two series
I was just discussing this briefly with my Dad and he added George Carter of The Sweeney (also a hit and run, though one that apparently took place during the series) and George Gently (can't find a decent link) to the pile of crime-solving widowers.
Since a lot of these kinds of shows tend to focus largely on the cases from episode to episode, it's a fairly simple way to generate some sympathy for the main character without the need for additional actors to crop up once an episode. It's not unlike Disney parent syndrome, where in a kid-focused Disney movie only one parent, sometimes even just one grandparent or older sibling, will be shown with little more than a one-liner about emigration to explain the other guardians absence, and that's if your lucky.
The general principle is, if they're not absolutely necessary to the plot, they're not in the film, but the dead wives are often far more of a plot point than missing parents. Unless the police show has a case involving a missing parent, in which case the missing parent is the main point and the dead wife is a secondary point that's often brought up with the spouse of the missing parent.
Anyway, that's all I've got for tonight. Thank god for trope-ridden police procedurals or I'd have had nothing to write about.
Also, as a side note, here are some links to a Dead Ringers parody of Waking the Dead and another parody of Life on Mars, in which they point out that if they keep solving all their cases in the seventies, all those cold case squads will have nothing to do in 30 years time.
Another quick side note. Look below to see Skippy's first post in a while. I fear that this post has disguised his and I only realised it was there when I scrolled past the bottom of my post to find that little Photoshop job. Also, just call them lore gamers.
posted by Alasdair Corbett at
11:20 PM
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