We’ve got eyes on ’em

Helen Mirren as Detective Superintendent Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect.

True story. Princess Di confided to me her mother-in-law’s favourite TV show. We’re talking the early ’80s – long before Peter Morgan’s TV drama series The Crown. Not that one imagines the Netflix soap was too popular at the Palace.

You’d never guess. According to Di, HM was addicted to an American crime series. Starring Telly Savalas as the bald, lollypop-licking Kojak. Di preferred Dynasty.

Sherlock Holmes (Will Ferrell) and Watson (John C. Reilly) in Columbia Pictures' Holmes and Watson

Doesn’t everyone have a favourite detective? There are countless in contention. Arthur Conan Doyle created one of the originals, Sherlock Holmes, and Agatha Christie gave us Hercule Poirot, Tuppence Beresford and Miss Marple. Recent additions have come from the Scandi-noir genre. But, as in most things, America rules, from the army of Raymond Chandlerian private eyes to Michael Connelly’s amazingly named Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch.

Australia has a few indigenous sleuths. In the late 1920s Arthur Upfield created Queensland detective Napoleon “Bony” Bonaparte, and now we have Mystery Road’s taciturn Jay Swan, who can go for an entire series without changing expression.

Detectives come in every ethnicity. Apart from Christie’s Belgian dandy, there was Earl Derr Biggers’ offensively stereotypical Chinese Charlie Chan, and the Russian Arkady Renko by Martin Cruz Smith.

Many detectives have physical or mental issues. America’s Monk and The Bridge’s Saga Noren are just two on the spectrum. J.K. Rowling’s Cormoran Strike has one leg. Australia’s Emma Viskic devised a deaf detective in Caleb Zelic – and I’ve found a few blind private eyes. There’s also a dog detective (Rex), a kangaroo detective (Skippy) and a cyborg called Inspector Gadget. A couple of investigators are given the unfair advantage of supernatural powers.

U actor Telly Savalas as Kojak in 1974.

In the 1930s, Dashiell Hammett gave us a thin detective (played on film by William Powell) and more recently we’ve had an obesity crisis in the force: Robbie Coltrane fleshed out Cracker and Richard Griffiths weighed in as Pie in the Sky’s Henry Crabbe – both outweighed by Nero Wolfe, created by the appropriately named Rex Stout. And let’s honour Hector Crawford for casting Lucky Grills as heavyweight Detective Sergeant Bluey Hills. (Like Law & Order’s Dick Wolf, our Hector was a Henry Ford of detectives, mass-producing them on a televisual assembly line. Add them up, from Homicide to Matlock Police: my old mate Hec’s body count exceeded that of Midsomer Murders.)

Detectives often come as double-acts. Playing homage to Sherlock Holmes and his amanuensis Watson, we’ve had that man of medical mystery Gregory House with his friend Wilson. Poirot pairs with the hapless Hastings. Monk with sidekick Sharona.

Cagney and Lacey

Aristocratic detectives? Lord Peter Wimsey and Lady Lara Croft. Lower classmates? The rumpled Columbo with his half-smoked cigar and most of the cast of Hill Street Blues.

Women detectives abound – and not just Agatha Christie’s. Jessica Fletcher, Nancy Drew, Olivia Benson, Cagney and Lacey, Dana Scully, Jane Tennison, Maddie Hayes, Clarice Starling. Crime is an equal opportunity industry.

Trends? DNA has been a part of detection for decades, taking over from fingerprints. Think of the TV show NCIS, with its newfangled forensics. It’s only a matter of time before we hand detection over to algorithms, as in Spielberg’s AI, a project he took over from Kubrick. Here they come – Holmes and Watson rendered robotic. As Sergeant Esterhaus warned in Hill Street Blues: “Let’s be careful out there.”