From ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ to ‘SVU,’ How Procedurals Became Must-Have Comfort TV

[feurioo]

“A good procedural is like comfort food: consistently satisfying,” says Erin Underhill, president of Universal TV.

The familiarity of the format makes procedurals easy to watch — even if the stories themselves are often dark and anxiety-inducing. NBC’s “Law & Order: SVU,” one of the most successful of its kind, revolves around detectives tasked with securing justice for sexual assault victims. In her role as Capt. Olivia Benson, Mariska Hargitay is a heroic figure on screen and off, given her 25 seasons (and counting) on the air.

“They are successful because our viewers see them as comfort television. They don’t disappoint you, and you want to keep coming back,” says producer Dick Wolf.

Full article over at variety.com.

Do you have a "comfort TV" procedural? What makes it special?

Comments

[starfleetbrat]

SVU for sure. I do rewatches of the entire series sometimes. Castle as well. Medium, Rizzoli & Isles, bunch of others too. I think its because they usually wrap things up within an episode or two. They're easy to watch too, even though the subject matter is sometimes heavy.

[author_by_night]

I need to rewatch Castle. I lost interest after a few seasons because I didn't like the decisions they began making, but I really enjoyed the first three or four seasons.

[lilysea]

I have enjoyed

a TV show about solving very old (historical, as in 70s/80s/90s/2000s) murders that I can't remember the name of

Castle

The Brokenwood Mysteries

stuff based on Agatha Christie

[shadowkat]

Cold Case?

[lilysea]

I don't want to watch shows about sexual assault or child sexual abuse, even if the perpetrator goes to jail

Shows about murders bother me much less

[meridian_rose]

Same, honestly.

[author_by_night]

I can't watch shows about sexual assault either, especially when minors are involved.

[meridian_rose]

I've never watched SVU, themes are too dark, like comment above sexual assault bothers me much more than murders.
L&O, L&O:CM, FBI, Castle, Bones, and the various CSIs are all ones I've watched some of. Have seen latest CSI:Vegas seasons. Probably others I'm forgetting.

I do love the cosy mysteries; Father Brown and it's sister show Sister Boniface Mysteries are current faves. Also Murdoch Mysteries and of course Hudson & Rex :)

[author_by_night]

I guess for me, it's 911? I like that they include 911 center operators (hence the name), because while I haven't watched that many mysteries or procedurals, it seems to me that the emergency operators are rarely given much attention. I also loved the first few seasons of Castle. And I watched Only Murders in the Building for a while. I need to get back into that.

My only qualm with procedurals is that I think people sometimes forget how long actual investigations take, which can affect how they respond to real-life criminal cases. Which isn't me saying there shouldn't be procedurals, I just think it's important to remember that they're portraying cases as is necessary for a 45- or 60-minute episode.

On the flip side, I think they're a healthier alternative to true crime. I went through a true crime phase for a while, until I became uncomfortable with that interest. I still enjoy historical cases or cases where no one died, but I feel weird listening to a story about someone's brutal murder while doing my morning workout, you know? Procedurals are fictional, if often lifted from the headlines, as the trope goes.

[jenab]

Numb3rs is one I return to most often followed by the Grissom years on CSI. Some other shows include the Magnum PI reboot and NCIS: Hawaii.

[jo]

I grew up on procedural shows because that was pretty much all there was in the early days of TV. But now I'm hard pressed to think of any that I watch -- I guess Silent Witness falls into that category, although they always take 2 episodes to solve things. Oh, and Star Trek Strange New Worlds, I guess. I used to be a big fan of the CSIs (mostly CSI:NY), and the early years of Law and Order (before it had any additional categories to it) but now I very rarely watch any US network TV shows. However, later this month, there is a new Law and Order series starting up that I will check out if only out of morbid curiosity: Law and Order Toronto: Criminal Intent (apologies if the video is region-locked). Just to see my home town playing itself rather than standing in for "generic US city".

Also, a major problem (for me) with procedural shows is that they don't binge well. A few times I've heard about a series other quite liked, and was already 2-3 seasons in, so I'd start bingeing it to catch up. The sameness of each episode become really glaring and boring really fast.

[wearing_tearing]

It's Bones and Brooklyn Nine-Nine for me! I rewatched random episodes of those two from time to time and always have fun. I have also acquired much knowledge about all the CSIs that exist because my dad loves them.

Does Murder She Wrote count as a procedural? I do love it.

[corvidology]

Mainly British cosies or the modern equivalent because not only are they comforting in terms of story - mysteries are solved, evil is punished - but because I also get to see home.

Father Brown, for instance, is filmed in my home county and watching it in the US I'm constantly going 'oh that's a wood pigeon call' or 'that's near my nan's old house.' Very comforting!

[delphi]

I think I bounce off a lot of episodic procedurals long-term because the more cases a show handles—particularly in the model of giving us investigators whose success we're supposed to root for versus other members of the public—the more it opens itself up to situations where I'm inevitably going to sympathize more with the other side and stop rooting for the protagonists altogether. Even when a procedural has the best of intentions and starts out enjoyable for me, if it tries to keep things interesting by mixing up the sorts of cases it handles, it's sooner or later going to hit a subject where I react negatively to how the protagonists are exerting power over or invading the privacy of a suspect, patient, client, etc.

That might be why Columbo is the only TV procedural I can think of that falls close to the comfort category for me. First, because it actually had a relatively low number of episodes, just long and spread out over many years, so it didn't have to get increasingly extreme the way a lot of long-running procedurals have or add up to hundreds and hundreds of largely infallible arrests and prosecutions that then informs how writers approach those characters and institutions. And second, because the base formula it was able to stick to largely involved people of wealth and privilege committing a crime and cockily thinking they'll get away with it until the unassuming working detective trips them up. The fact that Columbo is a howdunnit show instead of a whodunnit helps avoid one of the elements I enjoy least about a lot of procedurals, which is people being wrongfully accused or disbelieved (and it often being presented as their own fault) because there needs to be a red herring to make the case last exactly one hour.

[shadowkat]

I'd agree on Columbo. Also, Rockford Files and Ellery Queen. Another one was Nero Wolf.
They were more detective shows though? But I actually preferred them.

[delphi]

Oh, I love Nero Wolfe! The books are some of my favourites, and I really enjoyed a lot of the show too (although as an Archie/Wolfe shipper, I was mostly sad the show didn't maintain too much of those vibes). I think part of it is that even the extremely long book series was 'only' 33 novels and 41 novellas/short stories, with a lot more opportunity to change up the formula and setting. The TV show was only 20-odd episodes, and the Ellery Queen show was likewise about that length.

I do love a lot of formulaic multi-season TV, which I think is at the heart of the 'comfort viewing procedural,' but now that I think about it, I just prefer formulas in lower-stake shows like comedies rather than things that involve law enforcement or medical emergencies.

[author_by_night]

where I react negatively to how the protagonists are exerting power over or invading the privacy of a suspect, patient, client, etc.

I don't know about you, but I think discussions over how law enforcement treats civilians has really made it bothersome to me, even more so than before. There's this idea that law enforcement has every right to invade people's privacy "for the greater good", and unfortunately, I actually do think that affects responses to real-life violations.

The same is true of physical violence. For instance, police officers (on a show) will tackle a "suspect" to the ground, probably causing at least some amount of injury, and then they'd be like "oops, it's not McVillain, he's just wearing the same color jacket." That's actually not okay. I always think, what if that person had chronic pain, and they just got set back several weeks? Or PTSD? There's also no reason to do that.

[delphi]

Admittedly, I haven't had the best interactions with law enforcement myself, so there are aspects of those kinds of procedurals that I've always found stressful. But absolutely, in recent years the suspension of disbelief / distance of fiction over certain elements just isn't there for me in a way that makes for comfort viewing. Even on non-LEO shows, like case-of-the-week medical dramas, I just get uncomfortably distracted by things like doctors breaking into patients' houses, forcing the revelation of people's secrets, or administering improper or fake treatments to teach someone a lesson.

Don't get me wrong, there's a ton of TV full of things that aren't okay in real life that I happily shut that critical part of my brain off for. This just isn't one of those areas for me.

If you watch video essays and haven't already seen these, Skip Intro has a series on TV copaganda that raises some great points and asks interesting questions while also being grounded and understanding about what people enjoy about law enforcement procedurals.

[shadowkat]

I got burned out on the genre ages ago. But I wouldn't call Grey's Anatomy a procedural - it's more of a soap opera or medical drama?

9-1-1 is definitely a procedural, which I find comforting. I got bored of it finally. But may go back to it. I liked everyone on that one. Also enjoyed Lone Star.

My favs? The Good Wife - which became more of a legal/political satire, ER - more of a medical drama,
Moonlighting - which was just nuts, Remington Steele, Prime Suspect, Murder One, The Profiler, Columbo, The Wire (which is basically the best police procedural that has aired), True Detective, Homicide Life on the Streets.

Also 9-1-1 and 9-1-1 Lone Star.

I got burned out on the serial killer trope - so can't watch that any longer. And most tend to go there, unfortunately. I also can't do the sexual violence trope - no patience for it.

I'm flirting with Will Trent. And have done two seasons of Only Murders in the Building. A good procedural is fun, but they are hard to find at times. And I'm picky.

[rogueslayer452]

I didn't quite get into L&O:SVU, however I really enjoyed the original Law & Order and Law & Order: Criminal Intent. I would always catch reruns or marathons of those whenever they appeared. I kinda grew up having crime and mystery procedural dramas kind of in the background since my mom watched them (Law & Order, NYBD Blue, Murder, She Wrote, Poirot, the Granada Sherlock Holmes series, to name a few), so I guess that's where it all began.

I have watched and liked a lot of them over the years, and while I rewatch a lot of them when the mood strikes I think when it comes to which ones I've revisited the most it would have to be: Elementary, Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Bones (more of the earlier seasons though), Leverage, and most recently Detective L and Detective Samoyeds, both which are cdramas.

In general, there is just something about procedural dramas that are comforting because they are often self-contained in each episode. There can be continuation episodes or two/three-parters of an ongoing case, but for the most part they tend to mostly stay episodic. You can catch a random episode and not have to worry about whether you missed something previously, or have to watch previous episodes or seasons to understand what is going on. Most of the time you can have them playing in the background, it's that kind of comfort television watching that I enjoy. What's good about them is that there's variety, some are lighthearted or are comedies while others are more serious in tone and in content, so it depends on what you're in the mood for.

[jo]

Reading through the replies, everyone seems to be defining "procedural" as meaning a show about police/crime. I don't do deep dives into all of the stylistic jargon around different types of shows and such -- a show is a show and that's good enough for me, so before I answered yesterday, I googled what "procedural TV" is. It just means a genre in which a problem is introduced, investigated and solved all within the same episode. They tend to be hour-long dramas, and while quite obviously police/crime shows fit this formula well, other non-police shows also fit the formula, e.g. Star Trek, the older series, with the exception of DS9 I guess because the latter seasons were pretty much all about the Dominion war, but Strange New Worlds is a return to the story of the week type approach. Someone mentioned Only Murders in the Building -- now that show wouldn't fit the definition of procedural TV because it's one mystery that takes place over all the episodes. Same as a lot of cop shows: Line of Duty not procedural, for example. True Detective -- not procedural, etc.