I admit that one of my many pleasures is television. I have loved it ever since the early 50s. Back then in the days of black and white reception, we had comedies with people like Milton Berle, Groucho Marx, Jack Benny, Lucy, Burns and Allen, Bob Hope, Sid Cesar, Jackie Gleason, Laurel and Hardy and the Three Stooges, and later by Don Rickles, Rodney Dangerfield, and Flip Wilson, to name a few. We had family comedies that reflected our middle class values like “Father Knows Best.” “Leave It to Beaver,” “Donna Reed” and “Make Room for Daddy.” We had several popular Western shows with heroes like Hopalong Cassidy, the Lone Ranger with his trusty friend, Tonto, Matt Dillon in “Gunsmoke,” Roy Rogers with Dale Evans and Trigger, Maverick, and Paladin. We had a few police shows like Dragnet and variety shows like “Ed Sullivan” and Steve Allen’s show.
That was then. This is now and very different.
Now we have “reality T.V.” shows, many of which seem to me to be neither reality nor T.V. shows. We have shows like “Big Brother,” “The Biggest Loser,” “The Bachelor,” “The Bachelorette,” “Dancing with the Stars,” “Survivor,” “American Idol,” “So You Think You Can Dance,” “Hell’s Kitchen,” “Real Housewives” from everywhere, et al. “Project Runway,” is the only one I actually watch.
And we have endless crime shows with violence and sequels. How many
“NCIS,” “C.S.I.” or “Law and Order” variations are there? Do we now have one for every major city? For those of us who enjoy even more violence, there is always “24,” sure to return for yet another season, “Blacklist,” and “Homeland,” shows that allow us to actually watch T.V. characters being tortured. For those of us who enjoy soft crime stories we have what used to be “60 Minutes” style news magazines like “Dateline” and “48 Hours” now showing us exclusively real life stories about murder among our middle class population, proving that even doctors, lawyers and business executives kill people, usually their spouses.
But now with the “Mentalist” gone along with “Covert Affairs,” “Fairly Legal,” “Human Target,” “House” and now, “Mad Men” and probably soon, “Suits,” I find little left on American T.V. to look forward to watching. There will still be “Grey’s Anatomy” next season, but with so many good characters dying off, it’s beginning to resemble Death’s Anatomy. “X Files” and “Twin Peaks” are supposed to return giving American viewers like me some hope.
For comedy, I am left with “the Big Bang Theory.” The “Colbert Report” is gone as will soon be “The Daily Show.”
What is this T.V. lover to do?
Fortunately, thanks to PBS, the British are coming and many have already arrived. Our friends back in England have brought us shows like “Downton Abbey,” “Foyle’s War,” “Inspector Morse,” “Inspector Lewis,” “Poirot,” “Sherlock Holmes,” “Sherlock,” “Endeavour,” “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mystery,” “Mrs. Bradley Mysteries,” “Rosemary & Thyme,” “Father Brown,” “Grantchester,” “Midsomer Mystery,” “Vera,” “Zen,” and “George Gently.” And these are just my favorite English shows.
These productions are not all on during the same season or even the same year and some were first broadcast in England as long ago as the 1980s. Many are period pieces ranging from the late 19th century to the beginning of the 21st.
These English shows are mainly murder mysteries, “Downton Abbey” being the exception. But they are different from American crime shows in almost every way.
While American crime dramas take place mainly in large cities like New York, Chicago, L.A., Baltimore and Miami, English crime dramas mainly take place in small villages such as those in Yorkshire and Oxfordshire. While in America we see the urban plight and ruthless, brutal murderers, British shows feature nice, middle class, civilized people who sometimes commit murder.
While on American T.V. the criminals are extremely diverse and violent, those on British T.V. shows are much less so. While American crime stories show us every part of the murder including all of its brutality, in the English versions the murder usually has already been committed and all we see is the result and that without gruesome detail. We see the inspector’s reaction to the corpse more than the body itself.
And while America’s mainstream news media have made much of the term “unarmed victim,” trying to equate “unarmed” with “harmless innocent,” in British T.V. shows most murders are committed by unarmed assailants. England has a very strict gun control system. We are slowly learning in America that an unarmed man can also commit murder, sometimes with his bare hands or by using someone else’s weapon.
The detectives on American crime shows always carry a gun and make frequent use of it along with their hand-to-hand fighting skills so necessary in our violent environment. Inspectors on British shows are unarmed and almost never use force. Their challenge is usually intellectual, trying to figure out what really happened and getting the witnesses and guilty parties to tell the truth, even if it kills them.
While American police seem to have minimal education, many of those on English shows are almost erudite. Inspector Morse and his young version, Endeavour (Morse’s first name, his mother was a Quaker), attended Oxford and is a lover of classical music. His sergeant, Lewis, went on years later to get his own show and has a sergeant, James Hathaway, who attended Cambridge in the hope of becoming a priest and seems to know every subject in its entirety. Many of their suspects are brilliant college professors who are amazed at how knowledgeable Hathaway is.
After watching some of these shows, I feel more educated, more civilized and even more intelligent. The feeling soon wears off.
And the majority of lead officers in these shows are not only educated, but extremely kind and compassionate.
Father Brown is a Catholic priest in this Protestant country. He is not only educated but wise. He is able to solve crimes by mentoring the suspects and getting them to realize their moral obligations while at the same time offering them solace and forgiveness. Grantchester is a young, handsome and Protestant version of Father Brown.
Some, like Foyle, George Gently and Zen, a police inspector in Rome with a name said to be Venetian, are solving crimes while fighting their own police bureaucracy. They are opposed in their efforts by corrupt superiors who usually do the wrong thing but for understandable, though sometimes misguided, reasons. Most are decent people who made some judgement errors.
These British murder mysteries show that even murderers can be civilized and that even civilized people can commit murder. I’m all for people being civilized.
Although we declared our independence from England back in 1776, I have become dependent on the British for my evening entertainment.
Please don’t think me unpatriotic.
