Lasting in crime and on screenA moral ethnography of four popular TV series

This article explores the emergence of new fictional figures of criminals who unfold in the long run of seriality, and who are thus part of an "ethno-biographical turn". It analyzes the moral arrangements made by the characters of four critically acclaimed series (Breaking Bad, La Casa de Papel, Narcos and The Wire) and details the scripts they mobilize to resolve four moral antinomies: clandestinity vs. visibility, dirtiness vs. ennoblement, materialistic accumulation vs. altruistic dispossession, and continuity vs. discontinuity. These fictitious arrangements, with their viewpoints and their blind spots, ultimately demonstrate how our representations and our understanding of crime are shaped by what resembles a normative imperative and a social condition: lasting in crime.