Witnesses

Police investigate when bodies are taken from a cemetery and placed in houses for sale, along with a photo of retired police officer Paul Maisonneuve.

Witnesses is part of cultural phenomenon of the early twenty-first century which for the first time saw TV series not in the English language become part of mainstream UK broadcasting. That these series were dominated by the crime genre was part of a wider cultural phenomenon which saw the crime genre become the key form for exploring social and cultural contexts. The series used the genre to explore society’s fear of and desire for violence,
social isolation and changing gender roles.

The Missing

Tony and Emily Hughes go to France on a holiday with their five-year-old son Oliver. However, when their car breaks down one night in a small town, Tony suddenly loses sight of his son.

The Missing’s parallel storylines, set in the past and present foregrounds the Iraq war and the political debates and controversies about the British involvement in it. The role of popular culture in examining past history is relevant here. The institution of the army frequently operates as a microcosm of wider social and cultural contexts in the exploration of changing expectations of gender roles as well its relationship to family structures. Values and ideologies of different cultures are represented through different religious and ethnic beliefs. The economic context can be explored through patterns of ownership and production and how the product is marketed nationally and globally.