I actually subverted that cliché in one of my books. The hero is running away from a missile strike. He wakes up in the hospital four days later. Lucky for him, this is a SF series set a couple hundred years in the future and they were able to clone him some skin and fix the third degree burns over 80% of his body and repair the internal damage from the pressure wave.
Real life related story.
The guy in charge (whoever/whatever) of the US Naval Academy came in late one night, with a friend. He was out of uniform and apparently without a workable ID.
The poor guard, probably some 19 year old dweeb with bad acne, refused admittance.
Dick in charge raised a big fuss and threatened dire consequences. Dweeb held his ground.
Dick was removed and “retired” after following shit storm.
YAHHHH little guy!
Or something like that as I recall it.
DCI Tom Barnaby is happily married, has a good relationship with his daughter, has the occasional pint at the pub, and seems to be a decent boss.
The blond(e) one is intelligent and serious; the dark-haired one is scatterbrained, charming and fun-loving.
And at no time does he confess to the crime. He’s going to stick to his guns and fight the charges the whole way. Without bragging that he’s going to get off.
X-Files. I know Scully was a redhead, but it still works.
Go to about 1:30 in this clip from Arrested Development.
Actually, there are quite a few films in which the couple who you think are going to get together through most of the film don’t end up together. Both La La Land and Café Society in the past year were like this. So are Casablanca, Play It Again, Sam, Annie Hall, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Shakespeare in Love, Brief Encounter, and (500) Days of Summer. And that’s just to list the ones where (eventually) the couple mutually decide that they aren’t right for each other. There are also many where one of them dies. There are ones where one of them realizes the other is a jerk and gets as far as possible away from the jerk. There are ones where the jerk goes away because they didn’t love the other person and is now bored with them. There are those where one of them, who isn’t a jerk, decides that someone else would be better for them. I have been talking and writing for a while about at least some of these being examples of a genre I call the anti-romantic comedy, although that’s not a perfect name. I suspect that the love-doesn’t-triumph-over-all genre has been around just as long as the love-triumphs-over-all genre. The most famous example is Romeo and Juliet.
Here’s a website with examples of movies where the couple don’t end up together:
There was an Addams Family episode where Lurch’s mom was coming to visit, and the Addams pretended to be his servants.
There was Power Rangers SPD episode where the tech guy pretends to be a Ranger.
Also pretty sure it showed up on I Love Lucy and The Jeffersons.
Goodness! I wasn’t aware that reverse trope had been done.
In soap operas, the good girl is always blonde and the bad girl is always brunette.
I would spiritedly disagree. He is not a nice man.He’s emotionally abusive to Rina and particularly to her younger boy. The only family membershe’s ever nice to is Hannah, his daughter.
Is it possible to make a compelling mystery that isn’t a murder mystery?
Oak Island perhaps?
Or where I put my damn car keys this morning? 
Maltese Falcon?
There are three murders in The Maltese Falcon–Miles Archer, Floyd Thursby, and Captain Jacoby.
There are any number of Sherlock Holmes stories that don’t involve murder: “A Scandal in Bohemia,” “The Red-Headed League,” and “The Man with the Twisted Lip,” to name three off the top of my head.
There are, technically, no murders in DIAL M FOR MURDER. I mean, yeah, there’s an attempted murder, and there’s another attempted murder, and in between somebody gets killed in self-defense; but nobody actually gets murdered while various folks rush hither and yon trying to get evidence that’ll stand up in court.
And then have the zombies, aliens, ghosts or monsters sloooowly open the door and walk down the stairs in the dark. That could make for a very tense scene.