«Un lavoro inadatto a una donna»: protagoniste femminili nella serialità crime italiana

In The TV Crime Drama (2014), Sue Turnbull’s investigation on the presence of women in crime television series virtuously combines the two perspectives of “behind the camera” and “on-screen” and analyzes in detail the presence of women in productive and creative roles. However, this analysis remains limited to the English-speaking area (in particular the US and the UK) with a brief foray into Nordic territory, to examine the very famous roles of Sara Lund and Saga Norén. However, a similar survey for the Italian context is not yet available.
The aim of our article is to offer a contribution in this direction, by analyzing three television series with female protagonists that can be traced back to three different players in the national context: Bella da morire (2020), co-produced by Rai Fiction, Petra (2020-), co-produced by Sky, and Il processo (2019), co-produced by Mediaset. The analysis is set within the framework of feminist cultural critique of the crime genre in popular culture, while interviews with the creative and managerial figures involved in the making of the chosen case studies are added to reflect on the relationships between female characters in detection roles and female audiovisual professionals, in order to discuss the broader renegotiation of both gender norms and gender identities within the social context (Hoffman 2016).