Lazy scriptwriters

A large proportion of our consumption of TV comes on Freeview and a large proportion of that comes in the form of murder mysteries which, given our preference for early evening viewing, usually means a series recycled from the past, say from between ten and twenty years ago. Apart from the convenient time, one up side of this is that these older series are slower paced, don't feel the need to cram the screen full of noise and action from start to finish, to touch on all the tricky social issues - say child abuse or gender problems - of the day. One down side is the number of advertisements targeting older people. Walk in baths and other indignities of old age.

Now the mystery formula is well established. A lead policeman, usually a chief inspector. A complementary side-kick, usually a sergeant. A tiresome senior manager, perhaps a bossy lady or an irritating man, this last very apt to be into targets, savings and committees. A pretty & perky young policelady, working her way into a man's world. And our team get cracking on the case, the interest of which largely hangs on the policeman's right to poke his nose into all  kinds of private affairs, to leave no stone unturned. And as Simenon often reminds us, experienced policemen have a flair for knowing when something untoward is going on under a stone. Eel under stone being a phrase which springs to mind from (page 380 of) the story noticed at reference 2: '- Il y a anguille sous roche patron... Je ne sais par encore quoi au juste...'.

But the point is that the team are looking under the stone. They are looking in from the outside. Clear space between us and them. All too often in recent weeks there has been massive confusion between team and case, with members of the team being clearly compromised by proximity not to say involvement with the case - but not withdrawing, as one hope would be what usually happened in real life. The focus of the mystery has shifted from the case and its ramifications to the team and all its goings on. Which I do not care for at all. BH much more relaxed.

Although she does remember that her parents, at a similar time in their lives, used to get very cross about medical soaps in which the various private affairs of the medicos was much more important than the business at hand. All kissing and cuddling in obscure corners of the ward rather than attending to their charges. As retired medicos, they got very cross about the lack of proper professional standards portrayed: proper medicos left their private lives, their own problems, at home and got on with their jobs.

The good news is that another sign of a series running out of puff or of the scriptwriters having a bad day, that is to say the arrival of one or other of the secret services on the scene of what is supposed to be a common or garden crime of greed or passion, has been much less in evidence recently.

PS: when I asked Microsoft's Bing about 'lifting the stone to see what is under neath', it did not seem to get the idea at all. Whereas Google did much better, turning up the image above from the reference below.

Reference 1: https://blog.imaginechildhood.com/imagine-childhood/2009/05/under-the-garden-rocks.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/03/felicie.html.