Transnational Crime Scenes and Travelling Detectives: Space and Movement in Crime Drama Series 2017-2023

This thesis examines changes in the constructions of space and movement in transnational crime drama series between 2017 and 2023. Focused on the timeframe between Brexit and the Covid pandemic, it argues that a significant shift within the crime genre is well underway. Following European integration, the formerly national genre had become increasingly trans-national and hybrid, emphasising seamless movement and invisible borders within Europe. In contrast, series from the later 2010s and early 2020s show a renewed focus on borders as obstacles, and on restricted (particularly police) character movement. This study employs a transdisciplinary framework that draws on television and film studies, literary and cultural theory, as well as transnationalism and border studies to trace these developments in a genre that is both widely popular and closely follows societal discourse. It analyses six series—La Zona, Undercover, Giri/Haji, Vigil, Kohrra and The Gone—to highlight specific shifts in the depictions of space and movement in crime drama television. The spatial and temporal reconfiguration of the crime genre during this period is compounded by its extensive hybridisation with other genres in some of the series, namely thriller and (post)apocalyptic narratives; in other cases, it is destabilised from within. The study additionally incorporates an analysis of the series’ transnational distribution patterns, including their distribution in different languages through dubbing and subtitling. It argues that the televisual crime genre during this time shows a diffusion of character movement, as well as individualised series distribution; an extensive destabilisation of the genre; and a deconstruction of national and genre spaces, particularly crime scenes and borders. Both Brexit and the Covid pandemic were and continue to be influential on TV production, narrative and reception processes in disparate ways. In the context of these and other border-ing discourses, national and genre borders in transnational crime series appear more strictly enforced, and are presented as dangerously porous at the same time. Confronted with multidirectional transnational movement, all six series attempt to return to a distinctly national framework. This return is only partially successful, and the borders of space, time, genre and character categories within them remain unstable.

Name thesis:degree_name

PhD

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Media, Film and Television

Grantor dc:publisher

ResearchSpace@Auckland

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Baetz, Josephine Madeleine

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Zuberi, Nabeel
• Carlston, Erin

• television
• media
• transnationalism
• borders
• crime fiction
• crime series
• popular culture

Statement dc:rights

• Items in ResearchSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/docs/uoa-docs/rights.htm

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/2292/73214

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:researchspace.auckland.ac.nz:2292/73214