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Dear list members, Please ntoe that the Salford CCM Screens and Mediations seminar series will be launched on Tuesday the 14th of October with a talk by Yvonne Tasker, followed by a special reception. The venue is Adelphi House, AH 012, which is on the corner of the Crescent and Adelphi Rd in Salford. Every-one is welcome! Michael Goddard Yvonne Tasker: Smoke and Mirrors: "Psychic" Cops, Pseudo-Science and Male Intuition in Crime Television. This paper explores a clutch of recent (and some not so recent) investigative shows - including The Mentalist, Lie to Me, and Law and Order: Criminal Intent - in which the specialist investigative forms of knowledge deployed are simultaneously explicable in objective terms and yet in some sense staged as magical, a demonstration of smoke and mirrors performed for a diegetic audience of regular cops and for the viewing audience. In the process I single out for attention the reinvigorated character types of hyper-intuitive or perceptive men and the damaged genius, a figure whose very brilliance/intelligence has resulted in social isolation. Yvonne Tasker is Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of East Anglia. She is the author and editor of several books exploring popular cinema and culture. She is currently researching American crime television in a global context.