I’ve often thought it would be interesting to go through the
TV listings and work out what percentage of the dramas are about murder. I
think the figure would be very high. We’re obsessed with it.
It used to be that the subject was sanitised. Dead bodies
were clean; they lay in stock positions on the floor, or were slumped over a
desk with a knife standing vertically from their back. If there was any blood
at all, it was just a token trickle. And they were often presented in the guise
of mere riddles. Agatha Christie is a prime example; the body is just a plastic
piece at the centre of a game board.
Things have changed now. We live in the age of realism, no
doubt encouraged by the plethora of real-life TV shows that must surely appeal only
to those with darkly voyeuristic taste. TV dramas have been forced into the
same dark, depressing pit.
There is now blood in abundance, there are grieving people,
there is mess, mania and perversion. Sometimes you can almost smell the
filth. And it seems that the more blood, mess, perversion and grief they show,
the more critically acclaimed the drama is and the better are its ratings.
Maybe that’s how it should be.
I tried to watch one earlier this week, just by way of passing
a couple of slack hours in the evening. I lasted twenty minutes. I don’t want
to see that stuff any more. I’m no longer a darkly voyeuristic type. I don’t
think I ever have been, but the aversion to it is growing stronger. If I’m to
have darkness, I want a more subtle variety.
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