Presenters
Abstract
British detective fiction has a long history that includes Holmes, Poirot, Marple and Alleyn. These detectives were gifted professionals who worked as consultants to London’s Metropolitan Police or their designates. In the 1950’s and 1960’s the model was replaced by a team model based in local precincts. The personal eccentricities often seen seen in these detectives now was a manifestation of personality traits that bordered on the anti-social. Examples include characters from the Bill, Dalziel and Pascoe, and Trial and Retribution. The episodes had plots that put colleagues at risk to close a case. The solitary detective might have a partner whose social class, rank or gender contrasted with his. Dagleish, Morse, Lynley and Lewis are models. Juliet Bravo was the first series where the lead character was a woman in a police force who was able to function without major personality or behavioral issues. The detective fiction transferred to television now includes detectives whose behavior lets them fit in with the prevailing milieu. DCI Banks and DI Jimmy Perez of Shetland may protest the strictures of working in a police department but they don not transgress the boundaries of the detectives of the Sweeney or the Bill
in the 1990’s. Detective fiction contributed to the development of television police procedurals in the United Kingdom. The early eccentric detectives were succeeded by people who were able to fit in to a team despite dysfunctional personality and behavioral traits. Over the past fifty years British police procedurals incorporated fictional detectives while modifying traits that contributed to their uniqueness.