The following precepts apply to procedural shows from any country. It’s unnecessary to read the subtitles on Netflix, as the characters are always saying, “I have to go—it’s work,” “What do we know?,” or “So you left him in that swamp/basement/Arby’s to die.”
1. The main character in most procedurals is a troubled male detective whose marriage has crumbled because he works too hard and cares too much. If your real-life husband mentions a desire to become a detective, you should take it personally and yell, “Do you wish I were a serial killer? Then would you look at me?”
2. The detective has at least one small child, and visitation rights are limited to the night he finally captures a serial killer after a tense, violent standoff. This is the detective’s equivalent of taking his child to Chuck E. Cheese or a Pixar movie. Someday, the child will grow up to visit Dad in assisted living and ask, with a wry chuckle, “Hey, remember that night we were buried alive and Mom got so upset?”
3. Sometimes the detective has an estranged adult child who exists only to have a rare dinner with the detective, which will be interrupted by a cell-phone call from a crime scene. Studies show that estranged adult children of detectives have never finished an entrée.
4. A woman on a procedural is almost always an ex-wife who is so hurt and disappointed that she can be glimpsed only through a screen door, or the lead detective’s more warmhearted partner, who is either an overworked mom or a lesbian of color. This is called diversity. If the partner is an overworked lesbian mom of color, the show is eligible for government funding and a Peabody.
5. On the rare show that centers on a female detective, that character will express her gritty competence by wearing her hair in a ponytail. The ponytail is the equivalent of a male detective’s shoulder holster or the pint of whiskey in his desk drawer. The female detective’s husband has most often been murdered, so that his unsolved death can haunt her. Following her occasional dinner dates, any new love interest will also be killed. The technical term for this is “suicide by dating a female detective.”
6. The male detective will always wear a jacket and tie, unless the procedural is set in Scandinavia, in which case he’ll wear a nubbly sweater (also known as a Swedish tuxedo). He will sport facial scruff and bark commands at younger staff members, a group required by law to include a person of color, a peppy young gay guy, and the only blond person on the show. Crime is no place for blondes, except as victims, meaning actresses who appear as corpses covered with leaves.
7. If the procedural is set in London, Wales, or Edinburgh, the locale will be made to look depressing. Suspects will most often be interrogated inside garages where they’re welding nonspecific items. No one in these places ever smiles, because they need to get back to their welding.
8. Wealthy suspects will be interrogated in the glacial parlors of their immaculate town houses or estates as a silent, uniformed servant offers beverages. Wealthy suspects, even if they’re the grieving parents of a murder victim, are always guilty of being wealthy and of wearing pearls, cardigans, and headbands, and they will say things such as, “We’d gotten back late from the club, and there was blood in the foyer.”
9. If the show is set in France, the entire cast will be attractive.
10. If the show is set in Scandinavia, the crime will always end up involving climate change. Even the most grotesque Norwegian serial killer will be driven to his evil deeds by thoughts of solar panels and wind turbines. In American procedurals, the serial killer is most often a person who survived an abusive childhood, because Americans know that climate change is a hoax.
11. When suspects are brought to the precinct headquarters to be interrogated, they will appear on the television screen mostly as a blurry video feed, for authenticity’s sake. Yet they never look into the camera and wonder, “Is my hair O.K.?”
12. Any background information about a suspect will instantly be found online by a fresh-faced tech person, who will report, “He dropped out of business school three weeks ago, he’s had contact with three known militia members, and he’s headed east on a Hundred and Sixty-eighth Street in a stolen van.” This underling will never murmur, under his or her breath, “And he’s so hot. I’d go out with him.”
13. The relatives of a suspect will always insist, “I haven’t seen him in months,” right before the alleged criminal bolts out a back door into an alley. Someday, a weary mom or a taciturn dad will ask the detective, “Haven’t you ever seen one of these shows? He’s in his bedroom and he’s armed, duh.” ♦
