Special agents: the rise of the neurodivergent hero in TV crime drama

There is a seemingly endless flow of crime dramas on streaming platforms these days. Many are fictional, some dramatise real historical crimes and criminal figures.

But have you noticed how many characters – hero or villain, fictional or based on a real person – are explicitly or implicitly written as neurodivergent?

Consider the super-sleuth detectives of The Killing, The Bridge, Bones and more recently Will Trent.

The protagonist of The Killing obsesses over cases to the point of abandoning almost all other social obligations. And it’s hard to miss how Saga Norén from The Bridge (Sonya Cross in the American remake) or Temperance Brennan from Bones are portrayed as “on the spectrum”.

As for Will Trent, he is explicitly known to be dyslexic and implicitly portrayed as somewhere on that same autism spectrum.

The same often applies to an anti-hero, too. Dexter Morgan, the much-loved serial killer of Dexter, is a psychopath, albeit one who has been trained to work on the right side of the moral fence.

Shows that reimagine historical crimes and characters – often as archetypes of evil – also depict them as different in ways other than simply their propensity for violence.

Take the popular recreation of American serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. The show suggests Dahmer suffered a brain injury and frequently portrays him as socially stunted.

In Manhunt, there are numerous references to the supposedly high IQ (alongside his mental illness and insanity) of Ted Kaczynski, otherwise known as the Unabomber – the stereotypical “evil genius” in other words.

Why this prevalence of neurodivergent protagonists, and what are viewers gaining by watching crime stories predicated on this form of difference?

Different but conformist

In my book Ableism, Now Streaming: Disability and Cultural Representations of Crime, I argue this staple of popular culture is less about any voyeuristic impulse or offering glimpses into otherwise forbidden worlds, and more about providing flattering reflections of the status quo.

In one sense, this follows simply from the depiction and casting of these characters. Productions can be seen as inclusive and tolerant of difference, as can audiences.

But in another sense, these neurodivergent heroes and anti-heroes are loved because they are ultimately conformist. They do the work society, especially its branches of criminal justice, demands.

This is obvious in The Killing, The Bridge and Bones, where the neurodivergent hero is “weird” and “quirky” but works with and within the state, usually ensuring the demise of the “bad guy”.

Even Dexter has a moral code, which turns out to reflect a very conventional worldview. Rightly or wrongly, he is a walking advertisement for the moral justification of the death penalty.

Dexter frequently does away with due process, all those pesky legal technicalities that supposedly help the worst of the worst escape punishment. He embodies the type of immediate, vengeful justice many seem to desire.

Reassuringly not normal

The other flattering reflection of the status quo involves the audience being reassured about the relative normality of its own existence. This is most obvious in the cultural fascination with serial killers and rare, extreme forms of criminal behaviour.

In her book Extraordinary Bodies, critical disability scholar Rosemarie Garland Thomson suggests the notorious “freak shows” of the 19th and 20th centuries became popular American attractions because they served a similar function.

By putting disabled bodies (often due to unusual medical conditions) on display, these shows allowed audiences to feel good about themselves. They could exit the spectacle taking comfort in the knowledge they were “not like that”.

The freak show worked by playing with familiarity and difference: the bodies on display were recognisable as human, but still apart. Similarly, many serial killers seem to superficially embody normal attributes – often white, male, able-bodied, calm and rational – while hiding a twisted psyche.

The message is hard to miss: the serial killer is quite distant from normal, and their dramatic depiction can be viewed as a 21st century version of the freak show.

Crime storytelling is a way to naturalise social boundaries between normal and abnormal, acceptable and unacceptable, moral and immoral. We are fascinated by Dahmer’s cannibalism, for example, partly because it tacitly normalises the consumption of animal flesh as something that need not be questioned.

People can leave the cinematic or televisual freak show saying to themselves, “Well, at least I don’t eat people, I can’t be all that bad.”

Meanwhile, those neurodivergent detectives and police operatives reassure us that we can embrace difference when it conforms to, or serves the interests of, a society we want to believe is fair and just.