The Quirky Crime Solver Procedural Is Back, But It Never Really Went Away

This month sees the premiere of the second season of Will Trent, the ABC procedural drama based on the novels by Karin Slaughter. Ramón Rodríguez of The Wire fame plays Wilbur “Will” Trent, a special agent for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation whose immense skills of observation have made him one of the top crime solvers in Atlanta.

On a basic programming level, it's no surprise that a story of a semi-official detective with unconventional methods and a skewed view of the world became a ratings hit for ABC. It is a touch more surprising that Will Trent is also a critical hit, with an 89% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. This brand of procedural is practically the bread and butter of American entertainment, and it seems that, in the waning age of the binge-watch and streaming overload, audiences and critics alike are hungry for something familiar.

Crime fiction is, to put it mildly, a very big deal. In publishing, the genre made up around 12% of all print book purchases in the U.K. in 2022, with that number rising to about 33% when it came to e-books (the numbers are similar for the U.S.) On television, it may be the most fitting genre for traditional network programming, if only for how a weekly viewing schedule seems ideal for stories of solving a crime: something bad happens, there is an investigation, the perpetrator is found and arrested, cue the theme music. There’s a reason that the Law & Order universe has endured for decades, alongside the likes of NCIS and CSI. These franchises, however, are more traditional crime fare than something like Will Trent, which eschews grit and realness for a lighter touch that offers the satisfaction of a crime well solved without the entanglements of a troubled system.

These shows are plentiful: Murder, She Wrote, Agatha Raisin, The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, Father Brown, Miss Fisher Murder Mysteries, Monk, Numb3rs, Castle, basically every murder movie made by Lifetime, and Jonathan Creek, to name but a handful. They all feature amateur or independent detectives who use unusual methods to solve the weirdest of crimes, and often with a smile on their face. While they’re not always operating outside of the legal system — many more cop-inclusive procedurals like Bones and Will Trent take place inside them, pairing our kooky investigator with an officer — these detectives stand out as being decidedly unlike the boys in blue. The cases are bizarre, the heroes off-kilter, and everything ends nice and neatly.

This genre is as much a part of crime fiction as bloody murders and police tape. Agatha Christie, the biggest-selling author of all-time, specialized in heroes who always seemed one step ahead of both the police and the suspects. While the legendary Hercule Poirot was a detective, he wasn’t a police officer, and he had no qualms about letting his eccentricities shine as he needled the defendants into confessing their innermost secrets. Sherlock Holmes, another detective of intense intellect, tread the same path.

The quirky crime solver is someone who would traditionally not be seen as an ideal candidate for entry into the world of policing or justice. They’re often on the sidelines and are able to worm their way into this dark world, but always with a sideways glance and eccentric approach to the problem. Think of, for example, plucky older women like Jessica Fletcher who wield their unobtrusiveness and society’s dismissal of them as weapons to get to the heart of a murder in ways the police never can. Murder, She Wrote is a perfect example of this subgenre in large part because Jessica, a crime novelist herself, is frequently ignored by the cops who are meant to know what they’re doing (and they often claim her observations as their own when it’s convenient.)

The most beloved amateur detectives and quirky crime solvers aren’t just outside of the legal system: they’re often part of vulnerable demographics. It’s no surprise that many of these protagonists are women, often older. Many are neurodivergent or dealing with mental illness. This is still an extremely white subgenre although shows like Will Trent offer a welcome exception. Because these shows are focused on their hero’s perspective, we see first-hand the ways they are ignored by the authorities or actively put at risk by them. They’re mocked for trying to navigate a system that was never designed to accommodate them, so watching someone like Jessica Fletcher, Will Trent, or Miss Marple do what the big boys in uniform couldn’t, makes the victory all the sweeter.

It’s hardly a surprise that even ardent crime fans would find themselves drawn to variations of this genre that don’t prioritize cops or lawyers. In the years since the rise of movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, there’s been a greater increase in awareness of police brutality, crooked judges, and nationwide systemic abuses of so-called “law and order.” Audiences have started to question how the forever-present glut of procedurals like the Law & Order franchise have offered a skewed representation of how policing actually works. How do you root for Benson and Stabler or Jake Peralta when the real officers are killing unarmed Black people, throwing sexual assault victims under the bus, and turning up at insurrections?

Copaganda is pernicious and seemingly inescapable in mainstream entertainment, with scant exceptions to the rule. Indeed, propagating the lie of Good Cops is part of the deal with this genre. A 2020 piece by Vulture quoted one anonymous writer on a police procedural as saying, "I was told pretty early on to avoid dirty cops as story points. Policing is presented as a morally good cause [...] There are instances when, through our characters, we straight up glorify what should be illegal police practices." Being told over and over to root for the guy who breaks down your door in the name of justice feels especially insidious when you remember, as one writer in the Vulture piece notes, that a no-knock warrant led to the murder of Breonna Taylor.

A cozy procedural focused on an amateur detective or other figures outside the system isn’t immune to the stain of copaganda, but it does offer a welcome distance for the storytellers and viewers alike. Jessica Fletcher isn’t armed, for one. Sherlock Holmes and John/Joan Watson don’t have to worry about risking their retirement fund or precinct pressure to tell a witness to change their story. Moreover, the crimes they solve tend to be, to put it mildly, fake. Often, they face something horridly familiar to the viewer’s reality, but there’s a stark difference between the lurid, often highly sexualized violence of a murder scene on Criminal Minds and being crushed by a giant wheel of cheese, as famously happened on an episode of Midsomer Murders. Quirky crime gives us a distance from the universal agony of death. It can allow us to laugh at it, because how the hell do you keep a straight face in an episode of Murder, She Wrote where the crime scene is the set of a Friends rip-off and Jennifer Aniston is the killer?

Will Trent, which returns February 20 to ABC, is not alone right now either. Tony Shalhoub has returned to the screen as Monk. Rian Johnson's Poker Face reimagines the Columbo formula with a cocktail waitress played by Natasha Lyonne who cannot help but solve unusual cases flung her way. NBC's Found is far heavier in tone than these shows but it still focuses on an investigator with unusual means and her team of misfits working outside of expected means. Across the pond, the quirky detective is a crucial part of British media, from Death in Paradise and Professor T. to Whitstable Pearl and Sister Boniface Mysteries.

All crime stories are inherently fantastical, but especially in the primetime TV format. Law & Order: Special Victims Unit exists in a utopia (albeit a deeply broken one) where women go to the police with allegations of rape and are believed. They imagine worlds where good guys believe in justice, bad guys get caught, and the system does its job, and if doing so requires actively breaking the law, then it’s justified to the nth degree. It’s not as though our plucky crime solvers are entirely divorced from the rot, but they’re not so embedded in the weeds of a rotten world smudged by rose-tinted glasses that we doubt their true intentions. We want to believe in justice, and that there are good people who can get the job done. That dream doesn’t seem to exist in our world under the current stifling confines of a corrupt structure, so it’s no wonder that we’ve turned to the outsiders to save the day.

Kayleigh Donaldson is a writer of film and pop culture features for Screen Rant and Pajiba. Also seen at SyFy Fangrrls and Bright Wall Dark Room.