Originating in the 1940s and 1950s, the hard-boiled detective – often a private detective, came to the screen as the hero of film noir. It’s a film style generally regarded as starting with The Maltese Falcon, 1941 and ending with Touch of Evil, 1958.

The films are defined by having low-key, shadowy lighting and being set in the seedy underbelly of American society and are visually, and morally, dark. Detectives also have questionable morals such as Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep, 1946, or Mike Hammer in Kiss Me Deadly, 1955.

Modern revivals of this genre, called neo-noir, include Chinatown in 1974, Seven in 1995 and the critically acclaimed LA Confidential in 1997.

The traditional image of law-enforcement and the conservative detective was eradicated by the arrival of the vigilante cop film in the late 1960s. Changes in the film ratings system in 1968 allowed the release of movies that included more violent and controversial detective heroes.

Films such as Bullitt starring Steve Mcqueen in 1968, The French Connection starring Gene Hackman, Dirty Harry starring Clint Eastwood, and Shaft starring Richard Roundtree, all released in 1971, introduced tough, angry, cynical heroes who weren’t afraid to bend the rules and use unorthodox methods in their fight against crime.

The detective action film first became a popular genre of the 1980s and 90s. A backlash against the dominance of white, middle-class, middle-aged men in the movies of the previous decade brought a new wave of detectives to the screen. Here our action-heroes were offered space to address and challenge social issues like race, class or gender.

Films such as 48 Hrs. in 1982 starring Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy, Lethal Weapon in 1987 starring Mel Gibson and Danny Glover and Rush Hour in 1998 starring Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker, are often referred to as ‘buddy-movies’. Featuring two detectives who team up to take on a high-stakes case, these movies also utilised humour alongside their fast-paced, action-packed investigations.

In the early 1990s a new sensitive type of detective emerged on screen: middle-class, educated professionals who employed their skills of observation and deduction to solve the crime rather than using firepower.

We saw the return to a thinking detective – a criminalist – not dissimilar to the first sleuth detectives. Detective Somerset played by Morgan Freeman in Seven (1995), and Agent Clarice Starling played by Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs (1991), typified this new type of investigator, employing observation, forensic science, and profiling to solve cases, often involving serial killers.

Some of the funniest movies ever made were send-ups of the detective movie genre which offer many clichéd devices and motifs. They make perfect comedy adaptations, from subtle satire to broad parody, full of incompetent, slapstick investigators who somehow manage to solve the case.

Comedy favourites include: Peter Sellers’ iconic Inspector Clouseau in A Shot in The Dark, 1964, and The Pink Panther movies, The Naked Gun series starting in 1988 featuring Leslie Nielsen as Lt. Frank Drebin, the 1976 Agatha Christie spoof Murder by Death, 1982’s Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, Hot Fuzz in 2007, The Heat in 2013 and The Nice Guys in 2016.