TV producers find a wealth of story lines from rural America's struggles with poverty, other issues

Crime is flourishing in rural America, at least on cable television, with networks having discovered that shifting focus from faceless urban areas and into closer-knit communities offers a greater emotional impact for viewers, Tirdad Derakhshani reports for the Philadelphia Inquirer. That has led to the creation of a handful of shows set in rural areas of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Georgia, Louisiana, New Mexico, Wyoming and California.

Jonathan Tropper, co-creator of the Cinemax show "Banshee," about an urban criminal who talks his way into being a sheriff in Pennsylvania Amish country, told Derakhshani, "It's so much more horrifying to be confronted with the evil that exists in an otherwise Norman Rockwellian town. If small towns are the bedrock of America, then it's like showing that bedrock is riddled with termites."

One reasons for rural crime shows' success may be that despite higher crime rates in urban areas, the public perception is the opposite, Emily Owens, a criminologist at the University of Pennsylvania, told Derakhshani. "Urban-renewal programs in the 1990s were so successful they captured the media's attention, Owens said. When the crack epidemic in the inner cities subsided, more headlines were devoted to the meth problem in suburban and rural areas."

While many shows focus on young, attractive wealthy people living it up in big cities, this new breed of rural crime shows highlight the less than attractive features of rural life, such as poverty. Nic Pizzolatto, creator of "True Detective," an HBO show that takes place in Louisiana, told Derakhshani, "The traditional western presented America as a land of endless opportunities. That optimism, he said, is long gone. These spaces in the country don't get a lot of attention, but that's where the real American story seems to be happening. It's a story of economic collapse, loss of faith in institutions and the yawning inequality between rich and poor. The crisis of the middle class and its effective dissolution is felt throughout the country but is rarely dramatized." (Read more)