Well, I’m very sorry, but it’s just not on. There is nothing on telly in the evenings. Nothing. Not One Thing. Outrageous. Like many hard-pushed intellectuals *hmmm* I find it essential to wind down of a soiree with a bit of TV before I retire to my boudoir. But last night I was reduced to watching The Mummy Returns. I thought it was going to give me some sorely needed mothering tips, but no, it was an assortment of mouldering bandages, floundering actors and Rachel Weisz. I can only assume Daniel Craig hasn’t watched this film or he would have thought better of his recent marriage. Harrumph.
It doesn’t seem like a minute since I was complaining about gently pointing out the lack of anything except detective shows on TV. Now, quite frankly, I would bite the hand off any detective who showed him/herself on the screen, such is the dearth of any decent drama at all.
Assuming that commissioning editors have nothing better to do than read my blog – well, they obviously aren’t out there commissioning any good series, are they? – I have put together my list of demands. Just make these programmes and put them on telly as quickly as possible, ok? Or I might have to get cross or something. And you really wouldn’t want that.
1. The Killing. NOT the rubbish US remake, but the Danish original, with these small alterations: Sarah Lund will stop wearing that dire jumper and appear in an assortment of well-co-ordinated casuals, from Kew, Jigsaw or, if necessary, Boden. She will settle down with the long-suffering Bengt. She will pay attention to her son (who will lose the earring – yuck). She will change the bulbs in her house to at least 100 watts. She will do the housework and cook nourishing stews. All right, she might not have time to solve the murder, but so what? We can still have close-up shots of Pernille suffering so we know it’s all worth while.
2. Spiral. The red-headed corrupt lawyer will donate her entire wardrobe, beauty regime and gym membership to me. We will discuss the future of her colleague, the hot dark-haired lawyer, over drinks. Meanwhile, impossibly complicated French bits of plot will waft in and out of focus and the grey-haired prosecutor who looks a bit like Andy Warhol will scrunch up his face as though he’s just eaten too many Haribo Tangfastics.
3. Scott and Bailey. In the first episode of the next series (and make it soon, please), our dynamic duo will pounce on Rupert Graves and put him in the stocks. Then, at regular intervals during each episode, they will hurl rotten fruit and vegetables at him. His ex-wife and various ex-girlfriends can join in if they please. Meanwhile, the lady boss’s skirts will get tighter and tighter until eventually there’s a danger they may explode and kill everyone in the police station. Scott (or is it Bailey) manages to get her to the ER in time to have them surgically removed, thus proving once and for all that she is the responsible motherly one/the rookie who is finally growing out of her madcap ways.
4. Downton Abbey. This should be brought back immediately before I declare a state of emergency. I don’t care if they haven’t finished filming it, they can just make up the end as they go along. It’ll be all the interesting male members of the cast getting killed at Pascendale, anyway, so you hardly need a script, just a few shots of trenches with rats/abandoned helmets etc, cutting back to sobbing maid servants and Dame Maggie Smith showing the slightest possible degree of moisture in one eye as news filters back that her tea cannot be served as all the butlers have met their doom in Flanders fields.
5. Sugartown. The entire cast, apart from Sheila Johnson who is normally great, plus scriptwriters, director and producer, should be inserted into a cauldron of molten seaside rock and boiled for several weeks. The resultant batch of rock should be sold and should miraculously make enough to save the factory, which is then to be turned into a remedial school for drama script writers, called Abandon Cliches All Ye Who Enter Here.
Is that all clear? Off you go then.
