Not a Fan of British Television

Susan and I have…specific?…tastes in our TV viewing.

Probably comes from being an author and studying story structure (and all associated with it) so much.

Example: Some episode, show, or movie doesn’t catch our attention in the first ten-fifteen minutes, we move on.

Example: Characters behave in unprecedented ways, meaning there’s no reason for their behavior, we move on.

Example: The plot has holes you could fly a Saturn rocket through, we move on.

We mourn when this happens with a show we’ve watched for years and something changes behind the scenes. The best example was taking The West Wing away from Aaron Sorkin. The dialogue suffered, the action suffered, the plots suffered, the characters went from deeply three-dimensional and interesting to surface and glandular (bed-hopping).

More recent (and specific to British television) are Midsomer Murders and Shetland. Changes is scripting and production values resulting in weaker plots, less interesting characters, and a bit too much WTF? for our tastes.

Still, we remain loyal for the remainders of this season and hope.

Meanwhile…this young lassie caught me catching her and you’ll notice her attention wavers from me to what’s going on behind me (and is reflected in the window on my left (as you view this).

I leave food and am known.

So her departure can only be due to not liking what’s on the TV.

Which is a pity, because what’s on is Shakespeare&Hathaway: Private Investigators, which remains a gem and if no other reason (there are several) to watch Patrick Walshe McBride as Sebastian.

Pity this pretty young thing didn’t hang around.

It was a great episode.