'Feeling the Benefit': Character, Costume, Coats, and Compromise in UK Television Crime Drama

This research explores some of the costume practices and theoretical tensions woven into the fabric of the detective mac or coat, from familiar examples of contemporary UK television crime drama.

The use of these items helps create and define character through the nuanced language of costuming employed to look like every-day dress, drawing upon complex fabric dialects and the ‘intonation’ of fit and silhouette. Equally, the objects speak to the pragmatics of television production practices and the logistics of costuming the contemporary.

The chapter will explore what happens when the interest in, and continued use of these items of ensemble costuming grows beyond the boundaries of the character and production that features them. It will examine the language of costume employed within crime drama, the costuming tropes used to identify investigative mavericks, and the consumption interests within the replica market that seek to reproduce either ‘aspirational’ masculinity or interpretations of post-feminist femininity. Finally, it will explore how the items’ significance within the mise-en-scene move from helping to establish character to disrupting the narrative and compromising the realist conventions on which the genre is based.

The work draws upon cultural studies, fashion and costume theory, television and film studies alongside my own industry background and interviews with the costume designers from key UK examples. It will analyse the examples focusing on the objects’ implicit meaning/s alongside the wider implications for representation discourses; for the notion of difference, and who is able to lay claim to it.