Television Antiheroines : Women Behaving Badly in Crime and Prison Drama

As television has finally started to create more leading roles for women, the female antiheroine has emerged as a compelling and dynamic character type. Television Anti-heroines looks closely at this recent development, exploring the emergence of women characters in roles typically reserved for male, particularly in the male-dominated genre of the crime and prison drama.

The essays collected in Television Anti-heroines are divided into four sections or character-types: mafia women, drug dealers and aberrant mothers, women in prison, and villainesses. Looking specifically at shows such as Gomorrah, Mafiosa, the Wire, the Sopranos, Sons of Anarchy, Orange is the New Black, and Antimafia Squad, the contributors explore the role of race and sexuality and focus on how many of the characters transgress traditional ideas about femininity and female identity, such as motherhood. They examine the ways in which bad women are portrayed and how these characters undermine gender expectations and reveal the current challenges by women to social and economic norms. Television Anti-heroines will be essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in crime and prison drama and the rising prominence of women in nontraditional roles.

Milly Buonanno is Professor Benemerita at La Sapienza University of Roma and Director of the Observatory of Italian TV Drama. Her books include Italian TV Drama and Beyond: Stories from the Soil, Stories from the Sea and The Age of Television, both also published by Intellect Books.