Midsommer Morons

I know this post is going to annoy my Dearly Beloved, but the truth remains that we have very different tastes when it comes to television. I enjoy shows that are interesting and engaging, which entertain and/or inform.

My Dearly Beloved, on the other hand, enjoys crap.

Now, I appreciate that "crap" is not a definitive term; moreover, it's open to claims of subjectivity. So I intend to provide, for your information, a representative sample of my Dearly Beloved's preferred programing choices, just so you can see that I'm being neither imprecise nor biased.

Midsommer Murders

This is the show that defines the whole problem. Originally conceived as a formulaic detective show set in the depths of rural England, it has morphed into a seemingly endless procession of brain destroyingly dull episodes that are absolute clones of one another. The plot premise is essentially hacked out of the same cookie cutter: a series of grisly murders, usually having their origin in some long-suppressed secret/scandal/injustice or pointless rivalry going back centuries, and which can only be solved by the show's central character, Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby.

Fairly bog standard, you might think, and not much to complain about. Except for the following considerations:

Firstly, the action is entirely restricted to a small area centred on the fictional town of Causton, and taking in a series of villages with names like Midsommer Boghouse and Midsommer Flatulence. Now, given that each episode involves at least three murders, and the area of action is confined to about five square miles, this makes Causton and its environs the serial murder capital of the world. Forget Los Angeles; forget London; hell, forget Adelaide! The viewer is expected to believe that in this tiny patch of outback Blighty blood-thirsty psychopaths lurk behind every privet hedge and thatched cottage. And never mind Johannesburg, or Miami, or Rio - if you want to increase the odds of you ending up a toe-tagged corpse on the morgue slab, then the backwaters of the Old Country is where you need to be! Is it just me, or does anyone else find this premise just a tad difficult to believe?

Secondly, and as is de rigeur for formulaic detective shows, the sleuth - in this case, DCI Barnaby - always gets his man. In other words, this is a cop with a greater clearance rate than Sherlock Holmes! Now, making allowances for the genre's conventions, the fact that Barnaby manages to solve multiple murders every episode stretches convention to breaking point. Moreover, he does so in the time-honoured way of all mystery detectives: by using a chain of logic entirely - or mostly - unsupported by evidence; and certainly not the kind of evidence that would stand up in a court of law! But leaving aside that niggling technicality, what I want to know is: how come this guy isn't running Scotland Yard! I mean, really, if you had a country plod who was clearing every case of mass murder that comes his way, you'd make him Chief Commissioner of Something Really Important faster than you could say Fast-track Promotion Program! And don't give me any tosh about Barnbaby wanting to stay in the country, either; that might work for Hamish Macbeth, but that's only because nothing happens in Loch Dubh!

Thirdly, given that the residents are apparently living on the most dangerous patch of dirt on the planet, one has to wonder: why do they stay! I mean, if it was me (and, let's face it, you) who lived in a locale where people were showing up with axes buried in their backs, or as bait for the local fish, on an almost hourly basis, wouldn't you get the hell out? But, no, the stolid yofolks of the Midsommer region aren't going to be driven out of their homes by the fact that home also happens to be lethal! They've got more staying power than super glue. And since the population seems to never diminish despite the onoin slaughter, one can only surmise that it is being constantly replenished by the kind of people who think: oh, well, what's a few murders or the likelihood that our life expectancy will be cut in half really matter? We'll still buy this charming cottage - damn the corpses hanging from the rafters!

Now do you see why I call it Midsommer Morons?

The Bill

I admit that I used to like this program when it first aired on TV. But that was back in the day, when the characters and the storylines were as gritty as the production values, when individuals like Tosh (God rest his tired old soul) recalled the glory days of Bluey (aka Bargearse), and when in many ways the program itself was a commentary on the social decay and dislocation evident in Thatcher's Britain. In other words, it was a piece of telly that both entertained and informed.

And then it turned into a soap opera. Senior officers started shagging junior officers (or the civilian staff attached to the station), gormless vice cops got seduced by the dark side (and/or a sultry vamp) and turned bad, set-piece episodes turned into a never-ending, continuous storyline whose convolutions and contortions got more ridiculous and mind-boggling with every season. In other words, the emphasis switched from the genuinely dramatic to the purely melodramatic. I know cops shag one another (or civilians) and occasionally go bad; but what I am interested in is the humanity involved in and affected by these events, not the "shock-horror" value of the event itself. But that was the nature of the change: we went from examining impacts to being titillated by what the "guv'nor" did next.

Honestly, I was astonished the Minogue sisters didn't make a surprise appearance. And so something that had been good (in the way that only the British can make social drama good) turned into a banal parade of pointless inanity. It was as if the producers (I won't dignify them with the title creators) of Neighbours or Eastenders had taken over the franchise and decided to try and make a previously adult program appeal to people with the emotional depth of tweenies and/or who possessed an IQ of six. The result was the deadliest, dullest program on the box outside anything featuring Eddie McGuire or Sam Newman.

And, yes, I know: they've now gone back and tried to re-capture the spirit of the original by having discrete episodes and adding a bit of depth to the characters. But I'm afraid that it's a case of the mould having been broken and, like Humpty-Dumpty, being unable to be put back together again. Once you've tampered with what was once beautiful, no amount of plastic surgery is going to reconstruct the original. Better just to let the whole thing die a natural death and rest in peace (take note Darryl Somers!).

Rosemary and Thyme

Oooh, here's a tricky question for all those devotees of quality telly. What do you get if you take a pair of second rate actors well past their prime (and who were never much chop to begin with), add a plot premise about as likely as Richard Dawkins finding God, and mix in a series of admittedly picturesque locales designed to distract the viewer's attention from the fact that they're watching utter dross? You guessed it: a batch of Rosemary & Thyme.

And if you think I'm being unduly severe, let me explain the basic storyline to you. Two women (one of whom is supposed to be an ex-cop, but who is about as plausible as Julian Cleary impersonating Conan the Barbarian, and who seems to know sod all about police procedure into the bargain) are partners in a landscaping business that takes them all over the UK and even the Costa del Sol for a couple of episodes. And everywhere they go, every episode, they spend less time discussing geraniums and herbaceous borders (ha! I'll bet you didn't think I knew what they were, did you?) and more time catching the demented killer who has, just coincidentally, chosen to strike while they were in the neighbourhood.

I mean, PUH-LEEZE, how stupid do the clots whose dull minds dreamed up this crap think I am? Okay, I'm prepared to admit that, statistically speaking, it is within the bounds of possibility that a pair of itinerant gardeners could, by chance, happen to be in a certain location when a series of gristly murders takes place. And I'll even accept that those bounds of possibility might be stretched sufficiently to admit of the chance that said gardeners might have the wherewithal to detect and expose the nutbar responsible. But again and again and again - everywhere they go??? As our American cousins are wont to say: gimme a break!

Honestly, these two would have to be the most prolific indirect serial killers in criminal history. And you'd think that bodies appearing everywhere this green-thumbed duo turned up might be bad for business, wouldn't you? You'd expect that people would see them heaving into view over the horizon and, with one voice, would chorus: (expletive deleted) off! But not a bit of it! They're welcomed with open arms - almost as if folks had concluded that their snappy advertising slogan - we'll do your garden while you get done in - was the jolliest jape since Herr Hitler promised Neville Chamberlain that he had no more territorial ambitions in Europe. I've heard of blood and bone being good for the garden, but this is ridiculous!

And while I'm at it, could someone please, please, please explain why it is that all the supposedly diabolical killers this pair encounter never, ever try to kill the only two people who are trying to solve the crime!?! Hollywood aside, it is an established criminological fact that most criminals - even most serial offenders - are decidedly stupid. But this show puts homicidal idiocy in the Dumb and Dumber category! I think even the jerks who make the annual Darwin Award list for the most fatally stupid bonehead maneuver of the year would laugh at the imbecility of these clowns: Ah, duh, he shoulda killed the two chicks in the overalls before killing anyone else...

***

So there you have it, just a sampler of what I have to put up with for the sake of this marriage. Now, I know what you're going to say - because my Dearly Beloved has already said it. First, that taste is a subjective matter, and, anyway, my Dearly Beloved has to put up with the crap shows I like to watch. And second, that the programs in question involve the suspension of disbelief. I'll address each of these defences in turn.

Whilst I concede that taste is subjective (although having said that, it nonetheless remains true that my taste is impeccable while yours is suspect until proven otherwise), it is also true that I get to watch very few of the shows I like exclusively unless my Dearly Beloved is out of the house. On the other hand, when I stagger home at midnight from another punishing shift at the local convenience store where I hire myself out as the neighbourhood whipping-boy, I frequently have to endure the MM show in silence for ages before my Dearly Beloved goes to bed. And even the faintest suggestion by Yours Truly that perhaps we might watch something a little less aneurysm inducing is greeted by the kind of vigourous protest that, in public, would result in the riot squad being summoned. So it is not the case, in our marriage, that there are swings and roundabouts when it comes to enduring crappy TV imposed by ones life partner.

Second - and I wish I didn't have to keep explaining this - the suspension of disbelief only works when the underlying premise is sufficiently believable in order to facilitate the necessary suspicion of scepticism. In other words, if the audience is initially presented with a scenario so absurd as to be unbelievable, asking them to further suspend incredulity is just a waste of time - and an insult to their intelligence. And don't give me that it's just a story guff, either. As all great speculative fiction writers know, the world in which their characters move and the events occur have to be realistic in order for the speculative element to work. So if you're asking me to believe that a tiny patch of rural England produces more dead bodies per annum than your average Baghdad suburb, I'll be asking you to believe that I'm an alien called WaldkjfhcearubyfbUScfxlmkcn from the planet Aaliruhgfunvareygcfniashef.

The fact that so many people - alas, my Dearly Beloved among them - seem incapable of rasping this concept suggests to me that I might very well get away with my alien identity scam. In which case, have I got a ponzi scheme for you....

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Television - a device that permits people who haven't anything to do to watch people who can't do anything. (Fred Allen)