Unbelievable is TV's most feminist crime show, avoiding Hollywood's "badass" approach to feminism

Vulture

The Netflix true-crime miniseries is "the most feminist crime show in recent memory, but one that is not feminist in the typical, 'look at women being badasses' way that Hollywood often does feminism," says Jen Chaney. "As created by Susannah Grant, this series, which is ostensibly about the attempt to track down a serial rapist after his initial victim is deemed unreliable, is really about how women move through the world, not only as victims or detectives but as employees and bosses, mothers and partners, colleagues and friends. It’s a show about what happens when women use their voices, and how challenging it can be to figure out how to speak up and when. The fact that Unbelievable is all of these things while still working within the traditional structure of the detective genre makes it quite remarkable. Crime shows, including really terrific ones, tend to rely on well-worn misogynistic storytelling devices: the beautiful dead or assaulted girl, the loyal detective’s wife, gratuitous imagery of violence against women. Even shows that cast women as the investigators, like CSI or FX’s The Bridge, often give those characters hard, unwieldy edge. Or, like Law & Order: SVU and Olivia Benson, the character’s backstory explains why she is so interested in solving these crimes. Yes, it’s empowering to see women working cases with the same ambition and aggression that men bring to them. But it can sometimes feel like we’re just watching male energy or narrative devices filtered through a female character. Unbelievable takes a more nuanced approach."

ALSO:

• Creator Susannah Grant wanted to avoid writing "rape porn": "I had never a written a scene of sexual violence before. When I sat down to write it, I wanted to make sure that we weren’t doing anything that could, in any way, evoke rape porn, of which there is already way too much in our culture."
• Grant felt she had to get the credibility of the story right: "I thought the credibility of the story was so important that in order for it to be taken seriously, it needed to be credible. To me, that meant being truthful to the experience of everyone involved. And then also right alongside that was how we depicted sexual violence was really important."
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• Here's what happened to the two real-life male detectives who botched the Unbelievable case