From the beginnings of the modern detective story, there have been eccentric detectives. For instance, Sherlock Holmes never would have fit in with the typical late Victorian or Edwardian London population. I can’t imagine him bellying up to the bar at the neighborhood pub, shooting the breeze about the latest rugby match.
His eccentric personality has become a “type” as one detective after another is created for films, streaming series and TV. For decades, popular sleuths on British and American film and TV have had unconventional personalities. Many have an intellectual bent. Many have trouble relating to their peers and never relate to a romantic partner.
So many are loners. Agatha Christie created a few of the most famous and beloved detectives of the past 100 years. Hercule Poirot is one of the loners, with plenty of “little grey cells” and quite an unusual personality.
Miss Marple changes through the years. An aged spinster, she is likable, but the villagers of her dear St. Mary Mead, think that she’s a snoop. In later works, her character is more at home with the people around her.
Endeavour Morse certainly is an eccentric, a man who cannot manage a relationship. In comparison, his sergeant “Robbie” Lewis is a man of the people, well-liked, with a loving wife and children. They make a fascinating pair of opposites. When the subsequent Inspector Lewis series started up, the writers gave Robbie a partner who mirrors Morse’s oddities. DS James Hathaway is an intellectual, a loner. He may be a closeted gay. He is the eccentric that Lewis needs to make the stories so interesting.
Another eccentric is Lt. Colombo. Colombo is married but, throughout, his wife is unseen. His trademark raincoat needs help, and, in ways, so does he.
In July of 2002, a rare type of fictional detective appeared. Adrian Monk isn’t properly described purely as eccentric or peculiar. He is a man who suffers from a diagnosed disorder. He has obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and a number of disabling phobias. He has lost his beloved wife, and relies on an assistant, much like a medical caregiver, to do for him. He has lost his position on the San Francisco police force, but is called in as consultant.
I believe it is the success of Monk, which ran from 2002-2009, and still is a popular choice for on Prime Video, YouTube, AppleTV and Fandango, that has lead to the most interesting recent crop of detective characters and their common disorders.
Ben Miller plays Professor T which is in its fourth season on PBS. Miller has said his title character has autism. He is a brilliant man, a germaphobe who wears rubber gloves and has suffered from an authoritarian mother and a father whom he, as a child, found hanged.
Another recent PBS series, Patience, features a crime solver with autism. It’s lead actor, Ella Maisy Purvis, actually has autism. Ludwig, starring David Mitchell, is another popular recent Britbox and Prime Video series. John “Ludwig” Taylor poses as his identical twin brother who has disappeared. This forces Ludwig away from a self-imposed life of a hermit; he lives a solitary life as a puzzle writer, and clearly has diagnosable problems relating to people. Viewers have suggested he has Asberger’s Syndrome.
It's so interesting that our most cerebral, popular current TV detectives have common diagnosable disorders. I cannot explain it, but, then again, I’m no detective!
Audrey Kupferberg is a film and video archivist and retired appraiser. She is lecturer emeritus and the former director of Film Studies at the University at Albany and co-authored several entertainment biographies with her late husband and creative partner, Rob Edelman.
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