Arriving home from work the other day in the wind and rain, my mood was further darkened by news headlines about Trump, floods across the UK, and a US military expert proclaiming that the world is now at its most geopolitically dangerous since the second world war. Reaching for the remote, I switched channels in search of my go-to stress remedy – a nice juicy murder drama.
It might sound counterintuitive to find solace in such grisly fare, but I find there is something soothing about following a plotline where someone, usually a woman, comes to harm or tries to outwit a psychopath, leading to an investigation. Clearly I’m not alone. On Netflix, Woman of the Hour, a film in which an aspiring actor (Anna Kendrick) crosses paths with a serial killer, topped the ratings in October until it was dethroned by Don’t Move, in which a grieving woman is paralysed by a serial killer. In September, also on Netflix, another drama about a murdered woman, The Perfect Couple, racked up 3.4bn minutes of viewing time in its first week. It became the streamer’s biggest show since Bridgerton.
Intriguingly, given that the victims portrayed are so often female, it is women themselves who make up the majority of fans. The US cable crime channel ID (formerly Investigation Discovery) estimates its audience at 60% female. In a recent YouGov survey of Americans, 61% of the women said they watched true-crime content.
Is consuming a relentless diet of murder and malevolence night after night a bad thing? Could it be desensitising us to violence? I knew things had spiralled out of control for me when I reached the final episode of a much-hyped psychological thriller and felt utterly cheated. The husband turned out to be a perfectly nice bloke, her children were not scheming scumbags or swindlers and the denouement involved a preposterous coincidence. “What was the point? Unconvincing and no one even got killed,” I seethed.
What are we getting out of it? “It’s human nature to live vicariously through others, and that unfortunately extends to extreme events,” says Jean Kim, a psychiatrist and author of Psychology Today’s Culture Shrink blog. “Think about a terrible car accident – everyone is rubbernecking to see what happened. TV shows are a relatively safe way to watch and experience some of life’s horrors at a distance. It can also be subliminally comforting to remind yourself that, thankfully, your own life is not like that. There’s a kind of reassurance from comparison. You might be in a bad mood with your very annoying husband but then when you watch one of these shows, you can console yourself that at least he’s not a serial killer.”
There is also the fact that crime dramas are constructed to keep us coming back for more. “These shows are often so thrilling, they give us a shot of adrenaline,” says Abby Robinson, the drama editor at RadioTimes.com. “Once we get a taste, we want more. We expect tension, twists and being kept on our toes, not to mention cliffhangers.”
Robinson agrees that a big part of the appeal of murder stories is that they allow us to watch terrifying scenarios from a safe distance. “We want to understand what motivates these individuals, and watching them on screen allows us to engage with them without being in any danger. It’s controlled. It reminds me of when you’re a child and your dad pretends to be a monster. It’s terrifying but you’re not in any danger.”
Gill Harrop is a senior lecturer in forensic psychology at the University of Worcester who was previously an intelligence analyst with Lincolnshire police. “When we’re watching these programmes on TV, we often see the perpetrator doing the bad thing, and then they get investigated and caught. So there’s something about the satisfaction of resolution, which you don’t always see in real life.” In the real world, missing people stay missing for years, and killers are not always brought to justice.
When it comes to the question of why so many women consume crime stories, Harrop thinks it’s down to viewer identification. “There’s a sense of compassion for the victims. We can see ourselves in that scenario. You might think: ‘Oh, I could have taken my dog for a walk in the woods just like that character.’ That emotional connection helps to pull us in.”
On screen, female victims are often central to the plot, as we have seen in other shows such as BBC Three’s A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder and Apple TV’s The Lady in the Lake. Yet this prevalence isn’t an accurate reflection of crime statistics in the real world. In the year ending March 2024, 72% of homicide victims in England and Wales were male, with similar figures for Scotland. However, the gendered nature of domestic abuse that has been portrayed in shows such as Big Little Lies and the ITV drama Until I Kill You is a reflection of reality. While those shows focus on female survivors of abuse, in reality, more than 67% of domestic homicide victims in England and Wales are women.
Graham Bartlett left his post as divisional commander for Brighton and Hove police eight years ago to set up as a police procedural and crime adviser for authors and screenwriters. He has worked as a consultant on a number of TV thrillers including the BBC’s Annika, and also writes crime novels. “It’s true that the vast majority of murders are young men killed by other young men. There is a lot of debate about whether violence against women and girls is overly portrayed on screen and in fiction. When I’m working with a scriptwriter or novelist, I encourage them not to use violence against women as an excuse to titillate or entertain. It should be included with thoughtful intentions. But we also need to reflect the fact that it does go on. Also, sadly, a lot of crime against women goes unreported so we don’t know the real figures. Anything that can make it clearer that women and girls are victims of horrendous violence and abuse, not just from strangers but people in their homes, can only be a good thing.”
Some people argue that there can be an educational benefit to this strand of crime as entertainment. “Women live with danger every day,” says Kim. “We will always have that fear walking home late at night or when we go to the parking lot in the dark. Maybe the compulsion for us to watch these shows is a way for us to prepare for the worst-case scenarios. We are perversely reminding ourselves of the danger and how to protect ourselves.”
Harrop believes that the more knowledge and understanding we can glean about perpetrator behaviour, the better, and crime dramas play a part in this. “All the evidence suggests that people want this information. For example, one of the most recommended books for women in abusive relationships is called Why Does He Do That? by Lundy Bancroft. It really speaks to that notion of wanting to understand someone’s behaviour.”
Harrop runs courses at the University of Worcester in identifying abusive behaviour and coercive control. “In my most recent work with the police and in the university, I’ve been looking at women’s safety on nights out and across a range of settings from the workplace or while out jogging, and highlighting the role that everyone, including men, have to play in addressing this.”
She has also witnessed how identifying problematic behaviour on screen helps us all to be active bystanders. “You might spot behaviour in a TV storyline that you’ve observed in a friend’s new partner. That might enable you to sit down for a coffee and say: ‘Actually, I’m a bit worried. Have you watched this programme?’” She also mentions that sometimes a script can contain valuable strategies for dealing with a dangerous situation. “Woman of the Hour was directed by a woman, Anna Kendrick. The film illustrated an in-the-moment strategy I teach in my workshops. It’s known as ‘the fawn response’, when, if you are trapped in a dangerous incident with an abuser, placating them can be a more effective escape strategy rather than begging or resisting.”
To what extent do psychologists believe that dwelling on the diabolical side of human nature on TV could be having a detrimental effect on us? “For anyone suffering from previous trauma, there could be a potential mental health impact of watching these shows,” says Kim. “It’s what we call repetition neurosis, where someone gets drawn to that darkness, and repeatedly watches something over and over again in an attempt to feel something, to undo the trauma. If the person understands that is what is happening, it can be a healthy thing. But if you’re just retraumatising yourself, that isn’t good. For most of us though, watching the dark side of human nature is similar to watching horror movies. Maybe it’s a way of coping with scary things.”
Harrop believes that moderation is key. “Well, if you watch so much of it that you start to believe that this is how all men behave, that can be very isolating,” she says. “If you started avoiding people and changed your behaviour, that wouldn’t be good. Feeling safe is such an important human need. When watching these programmes, some people try to feel better by focusing on how this happened to the character and ask questions like: ‘Was she too trusting?’ or: ‘Did she have too many drinks?’ Essentially, they try to reassure themselves that they probably wouldn’t do that, so they’re safe.
“The problem with this is that it’s victim-blaming. The only person responsible for the crime is the perpetrator and you can reinforce your own sense of safety without thinking what happened was the victim’s fault. Sarah Everard wasn’t killed because she walked home alone. She was killed because a serving police officer decided to murder a woman that night.”
With the state of the world, maybe it is no coincidence that murder scripts are booming. As Kim explains: “These shows are particularly valuable at the moment, when, in the wider world, a lot of the time we are seeing the bad guys winning. Maybe these screen narratives are reassuring in a way. There is something almost energising about witnessing morally ambivalent, dark or downright bad behaviour at a safe distance. You can affirm to yourself what the line is between right and wrong. That is helpful and important right now. Because out in the real world, that line is getting murkier every day.”
• This article was amended on 17 December 2024 to more accurately reflect a portion of a quotation from Gill Harrop.
