Why Crime Shows Are Popular

1) Instant bad guy vs. good guy scenario.  Who’s easier to hate than a killer?  Or a thief?  Or a pedophile?  Viewers are instantly on the side of the “good” cop/detective/agent no matter how uninteresting they are as a character because they instinctively want to see the bad guy brought to justice.

2) Formulas work.  The someone-gets-killed-and-then-a-detective-follows-the-clues-and-catches-him formula has been done a million times.  It’s like a simple math problem.  Two plus two always equals four, and motive plus means plus opportunity always equals a suspect.  Divide by evidence, and you’ve got yourself a killer.  Any writer can copy and paste this formula into their show, slap in a few character one-liners to make it sound good, and call it “unique.”  Fool-proof.

3) People like to feel smart.  Crimes are mysteries that have to be solved, mentally unraveled and pieced back together logically—and we all know how much mental capacity the average TV viewer has these days.  The lamer the mystery, the easier it is for the viewer the solve before the detective, and the smarter they feel.  Therefore they continue to watch lame crime shows as an (sometimes unintentional) ego boost, thus advancing their popularity.