Characters

1.       Stock characters

·         Hero cop – the cop that ‘saves the day’ all the time. He seems friendly and like a perfect cop. An idol.

·         Heroine cop – the same as the hero but a woman.

·         Anti-hero – not a hero and has some quite dislikeable characteristics and as much as we don’t want to like them, they are actually very likeable

·         Quirky detectives – a detective with unique ways

·         Bad-tempered but brilliant detectives – one of those ‘touchy’ angry detectives who gets the job done almost always

·         Rookie – the new person who’s just joined to the police force/detectives

·         Buddy partners – Best friend partnership

·         Grumpy, world-weary superior officer

·         Forensic scientists/pathologists/other medical professionals

·         Psychology experts/consultants/helpers – self explanatory

·         FBI agents – people who are working for the FBI

·         Lawyers

·         Informats – spies who go and find out information secretly and come back and tell the team

2.

Codes and Conventions:

-          What style of detective are they? What is their role? Who do they work for?

-          Sherlock – Sherlock is a cold, arrogant and rude detective. His character would probably be the ‘quirky detective’. He uses his mind in order to work crimes out rather than technology and is very intelligent; he works for himself and sometimes helps out the police.

-          Horatio – Horatio from CSI is the hero cop who is quick and sharp on figuring out things and leads his CSI team. He is shady, intelligent, calculating and mature.

Audience:

-          What is the appeal of this character – who will they appeal to?

Sherlock – Sherlock appears to be very smart and I think an educated audience or maybe scientists or those who are interested in forensics and learning facts about this etc would be interested in Sherlock and would find him appealing, because he becomes across extremely exact and cunning. This could idolise him to an educated audience such as explained. Furthermore, his mature nature could attract older audiences such as adults.

Horatio – Similarly to Sherlock Horatio comes across extremely intelligent except this is due to his dark, mysterious nature. He is very mature and calm which could attract teenage audiences such as girls, but furthermore he could appeal to educated and older audiences because of this. His factual behaviour and ability to solve every crime could be extremely idolising for him.

Representation:

-          How are they represented – personality, relationships, sub-plot, mise-en-scene

Sherlock – Sherlock is represented as cold and prude, and he doesn’t tend to involve himself with people relationship-wise or build on relationships. He is quite detatched from people and appears to have no interest in having a friendship or relationship with anyone, adding on to the fact that his rude nature disadvantages him from people actually wanting to make a relationship with him. Sherlock also has a sub-plot, his own story where he fell inlove with a girl. This makes us wonder whether Sherlock’s dismissing nature comes from his past. Mise-en-scene comes in here as Sherlock always has tidy hair and is always dressed in a smart suit. This represents his intelligent, prude personality and perhaps punctual characteristic too.

Horatio – Horatio is represented as dark, reserved and mysterious. He is friendly to an extent with other members of the team but as far as I have seen  he does not involve himself with relationships much and as I said is quite reserved. His sub-plot is that his wife was killed, and so this gives us quite a bit of intreugement as to the way Horatio acts about it and why he is the way he is. As to mise-en-scene Horatio dresses smartly in suits and always has neat, tidy hair. This suggests sensibility, punctuality and intelligence.

Institution:

-          What other roles have they taken?

Sherlock - Benedict Cumberbatch who plays as ‘Sherlock’ also acts in other films/programs such as: Warhorse, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Parade's End, The Hobbit and Star Trek.

Horatio – David Caruso who acts as ‘Horatio’ also acts in other programs/films such as: Black Point, Session 9, Proof of Life, Deadlocked, Swirlee, Body Count, Cold Around the Heart, Kiss of Death and more.

Victims

-          Are they innocent / deserved victims?

Juliet Miller – Juliet Miller in episode 2 of Criminal Justice I think is an innocent victim because even though she committed the crime, throughout the episode she is picked-on and harassed by the crooked-cop and police team for a crime she committed out of self-defense.

Criminals

-          Are they petty criminals, accidental criminals, gang related, stereotypical, unstereotypical.

Juliet Miller – The criminal Juliet committed a crime out of self-defense even though it was a calculated crime. The crime was that she murdered her abusive bully of a husband after he put her through a marriage full of sexual abuse, emotional disturbance and he patronised her and made her go crazy. Juliet finally decided she couldn’t take it anymore and one day when her husband attempted to sexually abuse her again, she stabbed him with a kitchen knife. The crime was unstereotypical.

-          What is their motive?

Juliet Miller – Juliet’s motive was to free herself from jail after being accused of committing the crime, and to be able to get home and look after her daughter and give birth to her child. However the process of freeing herself from prison took a long time and soon after the court case she was found ‘guilty’.