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I tend to watch police procedural programs on television, but generally more European ones on PBS, and probably the ones that have eccentric, Sherlock Holmesian detectives. I prefer how the difference between induction and deduction gets tested with cinematic media narratives. Like the mysteries of Hitchcock, the underlying structure of cinematic signs are rendered more complex as the crime solution process is both obscured and then revealed, sometimes with no resolution.
More recently the empiricism that dominates such stories requires the eccentric problem solving and philosophical reasoning that is often the province of criminals rather than those enforcing the law. As programs like Breaking Bad have demonstrated, the political economy is different depending on one’s relative position to it.
Unfortunately developing the characters of criminals all too often romanticizes their social divisions of class, race, gender, and sexuality. For example, white-collar gangsters like those in Wall Street or Wolf of Wall Street are not included and certain ethnicities are featured. Justice also is elusively skewed among film genres when corrupt law enforcement remains problematic.
In feature films, the AFI list is instructive and canonical even if I haven’t gotten to view them all.
AFI described gangster films as "a genre that centers on organized crime or maverick criminals in a twentieth century setting. Profit-minded and highly entrepreneurial, the American gangster is the dark side of the American dream. The gangsters' lifestyles are portraits in extremes, with audiences cheering their excesses and reveling in their demise." www.filmsite.org/…
- AL CAPONE, Allied Artists, 1959
- ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES, Warner Bros., 1938
- ATLANTIC CITY, Paramount, 1980
- THE BIG HEAT, Columbia, 1953
- BLOODY MAMA, American International, 1970
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BONNIE AND CLYDE, Warner Bros., 1967 (# 5)
- BOYZ N THE HOOD, TriStar, 1991
- A BRONX TALE, Savoy, 1993
- BROTHER ORCHID, Warner Bros., 1940
- BUGSY, TriStar, 1991
- BUGSY MALONE, Paramount, 1976
- BULLETS OVER BROADWAY, Miramax, 1994
- CASINO, Universal, 1995
- CITY STREETS, Paramount, 1931
- DEAD END, United Artists, 1937
- THE DEPARTED, Warner Bros., 2006
- DONNIE BRASCO, TriStar, 1997
- FORCE OF EVIL, MGM, 1948
- ‘G' MEN, Warner Bros., 1935
- GET SHORTY, MGM, 1995
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THE GODFATHER, Paramount, 1972 (# 1)
-
THE GODFATHER PART II, Paramount, 1974 (# 3)
- GOODFELLAS, Warner Bros., 1990 (# 2)
- GUN CRAZY, United Artists, 1949
- HEAT, Warner Bros., 1995
- A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, New Line, 2005
- KEY LARGO, Warner Bros., 1948
- THE KILLERS, Universal, 1946
- LITTLE CAESAR, First National, 1930 (# 9)
- MILLER'S CROSSING, Twentieth Century-Fox, 1990
- NEW JACK CITY, Warner Bros., 1991
-
ON THE WATERFRONT, Columbia, 1954
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ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, Warner Bros., 1984
- OUT OF SIGHT, Universal, 1998
- PRIZZI'S HONOR, Twentieth Century-Fox, 1985
- THE PUBLIC ENEMY, Warner Bros., 1931 (# 8)
- PULP FICTION, Miramax, 1994 (# 7)
- RESERVOIR DOGS, Miramax, 1992
- THE RISE AND FALL OF LEGS DIAMOND, Warner Bros., 1960
- THE ROARING TWENTIES, Warner Bros., 1939
- SCARFACE: THE SHAME OF A NATION, United Artists, 1932 (# 6)
- SCARFACE, Universal, 1983 (# 10)
- SCARLET STREET, Universal, 1945
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SOME LIKE IT HOT, United Artists, 1959
- THIEVES LIKE US, United Artists, 1974
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TOUCH OF EVIL, Universal, 1958
- UNDERWORLD, Paramount, 1927
- THE UNTOUCHABLES, Paramount, 1987
- THE USUAL SUSPECTS, Gramercy, 1995
- WHITE HEAT, Warner Bros., 1949 (# 4)
My latest indulgence is viewing the British production of a Belgian TV detective series that I like because it does have the kind of intersecting eccentricity and surrealism that is not necessarily built on quirks but on trauma. We the viewers, get to share the professor’s delusions, which in the original Belgian story arc, lead to an actual prison.
"The initial synthesis of the ego is essentially an alter ego, it is alienated."[3]
Professor T. is a Belgian TV drama series set in Antwerp about an eccentric professor at Antwerp University. Professor Jasper Teerlinck, a.k.a. Professor T, is a professor of criminology. Annalies Donckers, a former student of his, who has become an inspector of the Federal Judicial Police after her studies, regularly summons the help of her former professor as a consultant. The show lasted for three seasons, released in 2015, 2016, and 2018.[1][2] The producers, Skyline Entertainment, announced that the third season would be its last.[3]
This is the German version:
The series has a German remake under the same title, Professor T. There is a French remake, named Prof T. as well.[7] In 2021 a six-part series also named Professor T. was shown on Britbox[8] and ITV[9] and premieres in the US on PBS on July 25, 2021.[10]
en.wikipedia.org/...
This is the British version:
The Belgian crime drama Professor T was a hit for Channel 4 through its Walter Presents strand of foreign-language gems, with three series running from 2015. Now ITV has remade it in English as a six-part series. The titular academic is a professor of forensic criminology who is drawn out of his academic bubble to help fight crime. He suffers from OCD. It’s not hard to guess how this condition might be advantageous for problem solving but unhelpful in day to day life. For the remake, Ben Miller steps into the professor’s meticulously polished shoes as Jasper Tempest, and the setting is transposed to Cambridge. The Oxbridge stranglehold on crime drama continues to be tighter than its grip on the cabinet. It must be time for some sort of access scheme...
www.independent.co.uk/...