Sensation/investigation: crime television and the action aesthetic

Abstract

This article explores the interface between crime television and action television, arguing that action/crime is a significant mode which has typically been overlooked in studies of the genre. It engages with the history of action/crime and its most prominent formal features discussing in more detail NCIS (2003-) and The Blacklist (2013-) and foregrounding the sensational elements of violence and physical movement through space as well as the flows of data and dynamic rendering of analysis typical of forensic crime television. Action/crime is framed as one of several modes which can be seen to organise and inflect crime content; in this way the piece suggests that textual approaches are most productive when premised on an understanding of the fluid, modal aspects of television genre.