The cat-and-mouse murder mystery has given us some of the most memorable female TV detectives of recent years: Gillian Anderson’s Stella Gibson in The Fall, Elisabeth Moss’s Robin Griffin in Top of the Lake, Sarah Lancashire’s Catherine Cawood in Happy Valley. The gender of each of these detectives was never incidental. As an independent, sexually liberated woman, Stella represents everything that the serial stranger she was chasing tried to extinguish in his female victims. Robin’s past as a teenage rape survivor gives her insights into her season-one case, the disappearance of a pregnant 12-year-old girl. And Catherine’s pursuit of her daughter’s rapist is complicated by the fact that the police officer is raising the child born of that crime. These intriguing variations speak to the capaciousness of the cat-and-mouse genre. It’s not only that details matter. The details can make a show matter.

The cat-and-mouse murder mystery has given us some of the most memorable female TV detectives of recent years: Gillian Anderson’s Stella Gibson in The Fall, Elisabeth Moss’s Robin Griffin in Top of the Lake, Sarah Lancashire’s Catherine Cawood in Happy Valley. The gender of each of these detectives was never incidental. As an independent, sexually liberated woman, Stella represents everything that the serial stranger she was chasing tried to extinguish in his female victims. Robin’s past as a teenage rape survivor gives her insights into her season-one case, the disappearance of a pregnant 12-year-old girl. And Catherine’s pursuit of her daughter’s rapist is complicated by the fact that the police officer is raising the child born of that crime. These intriguing variations speak to the capaciousness of the cat-and-mouse genre. It’s not only that details matter. The details can make a show matter.