| CATEGORY | SIMILARITIES | DIFFERENCES | THEORY |
| CHARACTERS | the detective who has a ‘natural’ instinct for law and order Student female teenage victim | The Killing, The mising has the main detective as female | PROPP |
| NARRATIVE | the first episode often introduces a lot of different characters | found out in the killing victim is dead in first episode | TODOROV |
| THEMES | the use of binary oppostions around familiar themes: family, community, law and order, justice. Urban areas being bad. The city being good/safe | LEVI-STRAUSS | |
| REPRESENTATION | reactionary representations of police, family, law and order, urban/rural | SEMIOTICS | |
| TECHNICAL CODES / LANGUAGE OF MOVING IMAGE (music, setting, props, lighting, use of camera, editing etc) | opening montage sequence that often gives clues as to the whole series – themes, locations, characters, events etc. |
