Sensation/investigation: crime television and the action aesthetic

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–present) and The Blacklist (2013–present), 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.