One welcome side-effect of this burst of crime-fiction on screen? Stories are finally shedding law-enforcement cliches. There’s no good-cop-bad-cop dynamic. It’s a gritty world out there – everyone’s gotta be a good cop, dammit! There’s no casual brutality – even hick-town sheriffs and security guards now brood over a forceful arrest, a bungled-up cold case.

And without anyone realising it, women detective duos are setting the new couple goals. The hothead and the stickler find common ground as they work late (domestic responsibilities be damned), checking dusty evidence boxes. Each has the other’s back; they have to. The killer is still out there. No one takes women seriously. And when the autopsy report won’t be here until Monday, someone has to yell, “WELL, THAT’S NOT GOOD ENOUGH!” How can romantic plots match up?

True Detective: Night Country (2024) is set in frosty Ennis, Alaska, where two women cops end up investigating why men on a remote research station have vanished. It earned higher viewership ratings than the three previous seasons, which featured male and mixed detective duos. Under the Bridge (2024) is set 1997, in Victoria Canada and follows the disappearance of a Punjabi teen girl. The final episodes of the season aren’t even out, but the bond between the local policewoman and a woman writer roped into the mystery is holding strong.

Two-person teams are great for tracking down leads and solving a case, finds David Thomas, a Senior Research Fellow with the Police Foundation in Washington DC and a professor of forensic studies and criminal justice at Florida Gulf Coast University. One officer can see something their partner missed, one can arrive at a line of questioning the other didn’t.

And with two women, it’s possible to explore plot details that male investigators might miss. The 2019 TV series, Unbelievable, features two women police officers jointly tracking a serial rapist. There’s widespread scepticism about the young victim’s story – all she has are hazy memories. But the women keep digging when others would have stopped. They look past male privilege. They notice other attacks and join the dots.

Women duos are having fun along the way. When Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock teamed up in The Heat, they didn’t just take down a Boston mobster, but sexist truisms too. Women can be awkward, arrogant, uptight, driven, and foulmouthed – and they’ll still bond on the job.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine pushes at every NYC cop stereotype, male and female: the precinct’s commissioner is gay, the muscled Black sergeant is a softie, they hate violence. And yet, detectives Amy Santiago and Rosa Diaz (via Babysitter’s Club references and in-house heists) solve their biggest cases without their male colleagues.

It’s no surprise that the sergeant on Brooklyn Nine-Nine has twins named Cagney and Lacey. The names pay homage to the OG women detectives from the ’80s drama of the same name. Cagney was single, Lacey was married with kids. Cagney was reserved and quiet; Lacey chatty and loud. But instead of aggressively disagreeing like male detectives on screen, they addressed their feelings from the first episode on.

The two-woman dynamic is playing out so well, even older cop shows are giving it a try. BBC’s Shetland ran for seven seasons with a solo male lead. Last year, DI Jimmy Perez, was finally off the force. His sidekick Alison “Tosh” McIntosh got bumped up to proper lead, alongside new detective Ruth Calder. Of course there’s friction, they’re cops, after all. But they’re doing things their way – and they’re both heroes.

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