Profile of Contemporary Criminal Investigator in Film and Television Content

Abstract

People have been fascinated by detective novels and complicated investigations since the advent of the detective novel as a literary form in the mid-19th century. The progenitors and early popularizers of this genre, such as Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle, prepared the ground for later authors of this popular genre. In the meantime, from the beginning to the present day, the techniques and methods of criminal investigations have been immeasurably improved. Criminal and detective fiction has followed innovations, so it has always remained relevant and representative in relation to real-life investigative techniques and methods. Significant development of the TV series as a medium and a massive increase in the quality of the recorded program through a significantly more serious approach and involvement of professionals from the film industry, somewhere since the beginning of the XXI century, has led to a change in approach to procedural and criminal TV series. Instead of the previously trendy but unrealistic and pseudo-scientific procedural programs and detectives whose characterization did not correspond to reality, a new wave of crime series has emerged that is significantly more grounded in reality and faithfully shows the methods and modalities of investigative actions and personalities of criminal investigators. We aim to identify common professional and psychological characteristics of subject investigators using media content analysis, narrative analysis, characterization analysis, and other appropriate analytical methods, and to propose a profile of a modern criminal investigator who, very importantly, corresponds with investigators in real life.