The Police Procedural
The longest-running and most widely watched thing on television is probably this band. A case comes in, the procedure is followed, it is solved, and the episode ends. Next week another case arrives.
The strength of the form is that you can start anywhere. Where the antihero band (→ The Age of the Antihero) chose stories you cannot follow unless you begin at episode one, this one kept the promise that any episode is a way in. Criticism talks about the former; in sheer numbers, it is the latter that has carried television.
⚠️This band has not yet been through the ledger's verification. Titles, years, and figures will be checked before it is written out in full.
The myth, corrected
CSI made jurors expect forensic science, and acquittals went up (the CSI effect)
The phrase is not an academic term; it is generally traced to a 2002 article in Time. And the empirical work has repeatedly failed to support it. The largest measurement is the Shelton study, which surveyed 1,027 jurors summoned in Ann Arbor, Michigan between June and August 2006. Its conclusion: the difference in expectations did not translate into a difference in willingness to convict. Watching the show did not change the verdict. The authors declined to blame the drama, attributing the broad expectation instead to the general advance of technology — a tech effect. The culprit is the era, not the programme. Cole and Dioso-Villa went further, comparing acquittal rates before and after the show began in eight states — California, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, Texas and Vermont — and found no empirical evidence for a rise. The upward trend in acquittals had, in any case, begun before the show existed.