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Theme
Genre

Procedural Drama

Satire and Mystery Fiction

A procedural drama is a cross-genre form of literature, film, and television that emphasizes technical and investigative detail over long-running character arcs. Its defining structure is episodic: a problem is introduced, investigated, and resolved within a single installment, so a reader or viewer can follow any one episode without having seen the others. The police procedural, which follows crime discovery through investigation to resolution within that same self-contained shape, is its most prominent subgenre, though non-crime procedurals such as medical dramas built on the same investigative structure also exist.

Facts
Notable Example
V as in Victim (Lawrence Treat, 1945) 1
Defining Trait
Emphasis on technical detail 1
Sources
1. Procedural drama - Wikipedia
  • Literature
    Lawrence Treat's 1945 novel V as in Victim is cited as perhaps the first "true" police procedural
  • Lead sentence
    places emphasis on technical detail
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