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

[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.