The Complete Guide to Sweater Detectives

The sweater-detective series is a distinctive form of crime television, broody and dark, born in Scandinavia .

Its roots lie in the flavor of crime fiction known as Nordic noir, but its branches include such popular English -language series as Broadchurch and Mare of Easttown .

The genre takes an entire season to explore and solve a single case.

The sweater detective is always a police officer because, unlike a private eye, a police detective is meant to be the agent of a social order.

Organized crime, with its obvious and not very interesting motives, has no place at the center of such a series.

Here are a few sweater-detective standouts to while away the dregs of a very dismal winter.

The Killing is one of the most influential crime series of the 21st century .

The first season of Broadchurch set the bar for British sweater detectives.

Broadchurch illustrates a key characteristic of the sweater-detective series: By the end of the season , the detectives themselves will be profoundly changed.