jeremylee

Midsomer Murders isn’t real life

By Jeremy Lee March 15 2011, 1:45 pm 2 Comments
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Brian True-May (yes, him again) has landed himself in trouble for saying in an interview that Midsomer Murders (yes, it again) wouldn’t work if it had ethnic characters in it. He also claims the long-running ITV1 drama is “the last bastion of Englishness.”

There’s been a bit of an uproar and True-May has found himself suspended from his job. But given how clumsy the characterisation is, it’s probably a relief that True-May has never included anyone from an ethnic minority background.

In Midsomer, the English characters are all either adulterers, bitter old spinsters, drunks, crooks and of course murderers. Hardly the most accurate – or flattering – description of rural life.

In fact aside from Barnady and his Welsh sidekick Jones, pretty much everyone else has severe character flaws.

So you can imagine the hideous and offensive stereotype that would emerge if ITV forced the producers to include someone from an ethnic background.

David Beevers

Quite right. It’s non-story of the year. The discussion should never have taken place. The “mysteries” might be formulaic and, sadly, very tired, but to their credit there is no obsession with mimicking (or attempting to mimic) so-called real-life. It’s utterly irrelevant what ethnic roots the characters have, whether all white, all black, all sky-blue pink or a combination of every colour under the sun. It’s ridiculous media-manufactured “rows” like this that are hindering efforts to tackle racism in our society where it really does exist.
True-May might have said it clumsily but I do not think for one minute that his phrase “last bastion of Englishness” was racist nor did he intend to insinuate that his programme reflected some Rorke’s Drift-type rearguard action in our country lanes against “Johhnny Foreigner”. He should not be disciplined whatsoever. Let’s face it: if there were suddenly characters of other ethnic backgrounds appearing from behind the hedges of Midsomer would he not lie open to an accusation of tokenism?
Chris Worsley

A storm in a bone china tea cup. Ludicrous sloganeering from people who should know better. He expressed the obvious badly, bit like the show really?
I feel like complaining about the unrealistic Asian sweet factory in a small West Yorkshire village now (Emmerdale) to try and gain some insane balance.