A format where the main characters solve a mystery each weekly episode.
Almost every
Detective Drama sticks primarily to this format, though some recent shows (eg. the
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation franchise) has upped the ante to
two murders per week, one in the A plot and the other in the B plot. Notable exceptions are
Murder One, which devoted an entire season to each case and the early seasons of
Homicide: Life on the Street, in which detectives would typically work three or four cases at the same time, each case taking several episodes to close (In fact, sometimes they wouldn't solve the case at all, and a case opened in the first episode remained open in the finale). In later seasons, they yielded to
network pressure and became a standard
Mystery of the Week show.
Notable Examples:
