Halfway through season 2 of
Life on Mars, I feel ambivalent. I get the appeal. I feel the love. It draws me in, and when I finish an episode, I can't start the next one fast enough. But at the same time, Gene Hunt is making me really uncomfortable. He's unapologetically flawed, yet charismatic, visceral, elemental. He's meant to have this seductive power to entice me to compromise my modern sensibilities and give in to his charms. It bothers me.
Sure, he could just be a mental construct, Sam Tyler's imagined ghost of policemen past. (Reminder: I haven't finished watching. If this becomes clear down the road, I don't yet know, and please don't tell me.) But on a Doylist level, that doesn't matter. Whether through conscious imitation or artistic osmosis, the Gene Hunt type has infiltrated the period cop drama: the old-school boss who uses primitive, ethically dubious, but effective tough-guy methods that get results, contrasted with a younger, more enlightened protagonist who embraces modern, intellectual methods. Fred Thursday in
Endeavour, vs. the young Morse; Thomas Brackenreid in
Murdoch Mysteries, vs. William Murdoch; Geordie Keating in
Grantchester, vs. Sidney Chambers
. Yeah, the tough guys are routinely chastened, but their hearts of gold remain undiminished.
This seems to be a narrative way of having your cake and eating it, too. We self-righteously relate to the younger man, who represents a civilized approach we see as representing our contemporary values. But we vicariously thrill to the emotional power of the older character, who seems to be more in touch with his gut instincts and who acts without overthinking. His biases, which we understand to be emblematic of his times, are reduced to quaint quirks that allow us to adopt an attitude of moral superiority. Homophobia, misogyny, and racism are too easily written off because we're meant to sense some deeper moral compass that bends toward justice. The fact that the old-school mentor is inevitably characterized as more masculine than the younger, more cerebral character is also troubling. Raw masculinity is portrayed as problematic but seductive in its strength and directness, while the methods of the new man, by comparison, come off as a bit indecisive, punctilious, compromising, and weak. Sure, the new guy tends to be right a lot, but the boss's methods work often enough to remind us to respect the supposedly practical wisdom of experience.
(Interestingly, the dynamic looks very different when the protagonist is female, as in
Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries or
Peggy Carter; you can't muster enough sympathy for a hypermasculine sexist pig if it's a woman who has to put up with him, I guess. Also interesting: In all four of the series mentioned above, the major female characters are linked to the younger, sensitive man. The wives of the older men are minor characters whose stories play out only in relation to their husbands -- not happily, but also not centrally to the main narrative. Gene Hunt's wife is never even seen at all, a too-convenient narrative elision.)
I'd love to see a show that tweaks this formula, possibly by providing more serious consequences for antediluvian attitudes. (Maybe Joan Thursday's story is that in
Endeavour? But if so, I'm not convinced Fred gets it. And don't get me started on Margaret in
Grantchester.)
