You may not know that our main broadcasters issue crime drama scriptwriters with a set of guidelines which they must follow if their programme is to be greenlighted. An ex-colleague has sent me a copy: here are some highlights.
Senior male policemen have to shout, “My office. Now!” at least once per episode.
A junior member of the team must stick their head round the door and say, “Guv, you need to see this” at least twice per episode. (“Guv” must never ask what it is they need to see.)
A senior member of the team must say, “What kind of sick bastard would do something like this” at least once per episode.
Where the most senior police officer we see is female, she will have had an affair with the senior investigating male officer.
Where the most senior police officer is male, they must be personally acquainted with the prime suspect, and may very well be involved in the murders/child abuse being investigated. (NB Any male who has reached Chief Constable or Deputy rank is evil incarnate.)
The senior investigating officer must only issue stunningly obvious orders, e.g. when a junior officer says, “We’ve had reports of a green Mercedes leaving the crime scene in a hurry”, the senior officer will say, “Check the owners of all green Mercedes for alibis”. (The junior officer must never respond, “No shit, Sherlock!”)
When the senior officer realizes that the serial killer is about to kill another victim in a house ten miles away, that officer must on no account ask any police already in the immediate vicinity of the crime to intervene, but must drive all the way there themselves.
A senior team member has to say “He’s toying with us” and “He’s been ahead of us every step of the way” at least once per episode. (NB All TV serial killers are superhumanly intelligent and competent.)
The authorities must be shown to be regularly missing vital clues – the more vital the better – to give viewers the opportunity to shout “You’re bloody useless!” at the screen at least three times per episode.
Senior officers or pathologists will regularly fail to share vital information with their colleagues: this allows them to be suspected of doing something wrong, or bending the rules, thus allowing another 20 minutes of airtime to be eaten up.
Make actors who’ve never smoked a cigarette in their lives and who are terrified of doing so smoke as often as possible – it will help to emphasize the unrealistic nature of the drama. (The viewer will miss any dialogue at this juncture as they’ll be too busy wondering how the “smoker” will manage to expel the smoke from their mouth without inhaling any of it.)
The private lives of your main characters are much more interesting to viewers than the case they’re investigating. Remember to interrupt the main plot regularly to focus on their banal and predictable marital/family/drink/gambling/drug problems.
No policeman who is any good at their job has a happy home life. In the unlikely event that they are still married, spouses will be amazed and exasperated that their partners are expected to work past 5.30 in the evening, or could ever be called on to leave the house in the middle of the night. For reasons that are never explained, the policeman will feel guilty about this (the audience will, of course, be shouting, “Grow up, you silly cow!” at the policeman’s spouse).
All self-professed Christians are evil. All self-professed Muslims are nice, or have been led astray through no fault of their own, or have been framed by non-Muslims (often Israeli agents or indigenous white racists).
If a character is a rich, successful, middle class male, he is a friend of the Chief Constable’s (they will both be Masons), and he is guilty.
All upper class characters are guilty.
American TV producers long ago realized that needlessly delaying the results of forensic analysis for plot purposes simply annoys the viewer: consequently, UK scriptwriters should use the device at least twice per episode.
As a rule, plot and character development that would take five minutes in a US crime drama should be strung out for at least twenty minutes on British TV.
Any policeman who has to kill a criminal during the course of an investigation will be severely traumatized by the event: they will drink a lot, cry, stare moodily into space, shout and refuse to talk sensibly to anyone about it. They must never simply accept is as part of the job, and get on with things.
All abandoned warehouses must be awash in dripping water, even if the water supply got cut off years ago and it evidently hasn’t rained in weeks.
If the plot demands it, central characters are allowed to radically alter their personalities from one episode to the next, e.g. a sensible, punctilious forensic pathologist can have a wild affair with the chief suspect in the case they’re investigating: consistency is the hobgoblin of foreign scriptwriters.
You must never create a plot in which excessive political correctness within the political justice system leads to tragedy.
Journalists are the scummiest people on earth. Except for TV people, of course; they’re vermin.
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