Why British TV Succeeds and American Pap Fails

May 2010 (SVRWA Newsletter, May 2010, Volume 14, Issue 5)

By Donnamaie White

      There are few shows that reach into our hearts and minds, and lately fewer reaching our minds. Exceptions are:
      NCIS, which hasn’t managed to fall apart after seven seasons.
      Castle, which, heading for season three, is holding itself to the original premise and hasn’t messed with that. (Show more writers!)
      CSI and its descendants, until they started doing stories that involved inter-office romances and affairs, dug up x-wives and “surprise” children, and the stories went to hell in a hand basket. The lead in CSI left and they returned an actress (and a character we did not like). Should have killed the series right there.
      Blood Ties, which was cut off at the knees. (Ooops - that was Canadian.)
      The Closer, season 1-3, but which is now slowly if not already disintegrated as they make the lead more and more of a whack job, making the difference between her being a hammer (acting professionally) and her silly (spineless) behavior with her family. The reduction of Agent Howard to a bit player is a waste of that actor’s talent.
      American TV writers “tinker” too much, reducing the shows to carbons of themselves.
      Here’s what British TV does to its heroes and heroines.

In Waking the Dead, a blond investigator went off a roof of a 4-story building to land at the lead character’s feet. And they showed that. Season ender. Guess that character won’t be back….They dealt with the loss the whole next season. Every story has a real office problem and a real murder. Hooked me. Four seasons out now.

Silent Witness, Forensics before CSI was invented, the female lead wore pants and had short hair (at a time if you wore pants and had short hair you were routinely asked if you were a Lesbian). She also had lovers, a dysfunctional family and solved murders from the Autopsy table.

In Denzeil & Pascoe, the show was advertised as a fat man who picked his nose and scratched his balls combined with an “Ivy League young partner” – well, the Brits wouldn’t consider it “Ivy League” but PBS was trying to explain the gap here. The fat man DID scratch and pick, and took a shotgun to the chest. Last episode they ran over here. His partner was a nice clean cut guy with a smart and different girlfriend. They solved horrific murders.

I just found the Region 1 DVDs for season one. I also got some of the books. (Most if not all British TV is based on books. The British actually read. And write damn well too!) The Fat Man gets shot or otherwise disabled in a couple of them evidently. The other six seasons are available on Region 2 format (British) (ha ha – I have a Mac – I can play Region 2).

In Inspector Frost, the young sidekick was leaving the series. So they killed him.Bang. And had him mourned right there and then. And you never saw it coming. Note the Season 14 on the cover - they last forever in Britain.

In Inspector Morse, when John Thaw took up the Kavenaugh QC Series (Queen’s Council) and they were ending the Morse series (more 2-hour movies than I can count), they had the lead character DIE. Dead. Specifically, DROP DEAD. Wow! Unfortunately, so did the actor in real life.

Inspector Lewis, his former sidekick, now has his own series. You can get the complete DVD collector’s set of Morse for just under $500. Region 1 (USA) and Region 2. And there’s a new and different (former priest) sidekick. The Brits tackle everything.

In Midsomer Murders, the lead character is going to “retire” at the end of filming for the 80th episode. He and his “wife” will retire someplace, and they have brought in a “cousin” so the Barnaby name (Inspector Barnaby) will go on.
In this series, he’s gone through three sidekicks, “promoted”. But various repeating characters that made it through a number of episodes have “died”. You care about the wife, the doctor, the other supporting character regulars, the village, the place. There are Midsomer Tours over there. They stopped running them on PBC, we followed them to A&E and then the BIO channel.

Midsomer Murders, of which I own about 15 Region 2 episodes of the nearly 80 made (each a 2-hour movie), is finally catching up. They have 15 boxed sets in Region 1 on Amazon, and set 16 announced. Slightly behind the Region 2 releases. I have these books too.

In Inspector Lynley, there were episodes where he got into trouble by bedding a woman who ends up daed. In another, his wife and unborn child were killed. (In the book. On TV they brought her back, then had a different actress play her, and then shot her. Again. Dead.) There are books and there are the TV episodes.

(They stopped making them because some hair-brained wit decided to have the Inspector have a relationship with his sergeant (a woman) and the author, who had a firm hold on the rights, said no way. Production stopped.) The books keep coming. In other words, they would have gone down the road CSI and it’s off-spring did. Nope. Even in England, it is frowned upon behavior.

New Tricks. This show features the over-the-hill gang of former lead inspectors. Led by a woman. They all have warts. One has to stay on his meds. Hysterical. They solve interesting odd-ball murders and cold cases.

Prime Suspect 1-7 The first show to come on head-to-head dealing with women fighting to be taken serious in the British Police Force. Hellen Mirran of course.

And of course Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, Heat of the Sun, Foyle’s War, Callan, Murphy’s Law, Pie in the Sky, I haven’t seen the Commander (a woman), Helen West Casebook, Ruth Rendall, Mrs. Bradley, Inspector Alleyn, Dick Francis, Rebus.

Taggart – the lead actor DIED in real life – but the show has remained on the air! It was THAT GOOD.

Notice the leads are not cover-model pretty – they are REAL MEN, REAL WOMEN, REAL PEOPLE. Yes, that is part of the attraction. The other? REALLY GOOD WRITING!

They just had a cattle call in Hollywood - no more plastic boobs! Maybe they are catching on.