The Mad Men Can’t Quite Get Hold Of Me

A year or so ago, I wrote my first brief response to AMC’s Mad Men. Three episodes in, I described it as ‘grim’ and a ‘serious downer’. Now, five seasons in, I’m still inclined to that description. (The fact that it has  taken me this long to come close to exhausting Netflix’s online repository of itsContinue reading “The Mad Men Can’t Quite Get Hold Of Me”

The Killing and the Death That Dare Not Speak Its Name

One important feature of AMC’s The Killing, (the subject of yesterday’s post), which it inherits from the Danish original Forbrydelsen, is its focus on the effect of the central murder on the victim’s family. In so doing, the show manages to be, besides the imperfect police procedural, a painful examination of the most commonly ignoredContinue reading “The Killing and the Death That Dare Not Speak Its Name”

The Killing as Cautionary Police Procedural

If Wikipedia’s entry for “police procedural” is any indicator, AMC’s The Killing is not commonly thought of as one. But despite being a traditional whodunit, it has many of the features of that genre; it depicts “a number of police-related topics such as forensics, autopsies, the gathering of evidence, the use of search warrants andContinue reading “The Killing as Cautionary Police Procedural”