Midsomer Murders

[JoeZhang]

The ITV1 detective show, which has run for 14 series, ‘wouldn’t work’ if there was any racial diversity in it, producer True-May said.

‘We’re the last bastion of Englishness and I want to keep it that way,’ he told Radio Times.

He insisted he had never been tackled before about the ‘whites only’ rule in the show, which stars John Nettles as Det Ch Insp Tom Barnaby. He said: ‘I’ve never been picked up on that but quite honestly I wouldn’t want to change it.

‘We just don’t have ethnic minorities involved. Because it wouldn’t be the English village with them. It just wouldn’t work. ‘Suddenly we might be in Slough. Ironically, Causton (one of the main centres of population in the show) is supposed to be Slough. And if you went into Slough you wouldn’t see a white face there.’

Asked why ‘Englishness’ could not include other races, he added: ‘Well, it should do and maybe I’m not politically correct. ‘I’m trying to make something that appeals to a certain audience, which seems to succeed. And I don’t want to change it.’

Swearing, violence and sex scenes are banned but ‘incest, blackmail, lesbianism and homosexuality’ are allowed, he said. Actor Jason Hughes, who plays DS Jones, said he had pondered the lack of ethnic minorities.
‘I don’t think that we would all suddenly go, “A black gardener in Midsomer? You can’t have that.” ‘I think we’d all go, “Great, fantastic,”’ he said.


The production company behind the show, All3Media, has now suspended True-May, with ITV saying it was 'shocked and appalled' at his comments.

http://www.metro.co.uk/tv/858090-mi...nded-after-whites-only-comments#ixzz1Gf5CRQih


This is starting to cause a bit of a fuss in the UK - what do fellow brits think?

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I come from a place like that, where if a black person turned up, they'd probably get followed around by the slack-jawed locals and prodded with a stick.

 

[Starkers]

I'm torn here. On the one side if you go to many (but not all) rural areas you really won't find anyone from an ethnic background, so there is an element of being realistic here (if a small place like Midsummer having 200+ murders in 15 years could ever be construed as realistic!) but the other side of the coin is, to misqoute Kassidy Yates, maybe we should show things as they should/could be rather than as they are?

It is a bit ridiculous that there's never been a single black or asian character though, however realistic the show is...also pretty amazing it's taken so many years for anyone to really notice!!

 

[Australis]

I remember visiting my mother's home town in the UK, and it was a bit of a shock when a Jamaican man moved there. MM, I don't think, would work with racial diversity. Sorry, but there y'go.

 

[ElBurro]

I'm torn as well. I don't believe in the whole 'minorities have to be included' if it isn't true to RL. IMO, it's just another way of singling minorities out when I believe that everyone should be treated equally. However, his flat out refusal to include them, saying it wouldn't embody 'Englishness' with minorities in, really irks me.

Though I do like the irony of a producer of a show set in a little village with that many murders arguing for realism

 

[Pauln6]

I don't think there is anything intrinsically wrong with portraying rural England as being dominated by middle-clas white folks... because it is! However, it's untrue to say that there are NO ethnic minorities living in rural England at all. If the program has an official blanket policy of only employing white actors then it seems to me that they've taken it too far. A talented black actor or actress (or any other ethnicity) should be able to audition for a part where race isn't intrinsic to the character and should have a chance of nailing the part. Guinevere in Merlin has some African heritage and I have to admit, while I thought it was a bit odd to start with, Angel Coulby has always been one of the best things in the show (although I don't know if they made a conscious choice to employ an 'ethnic' actress or if she was just the best actress they auditioned). I'm sure African chambermaids were pretty rare in medieval times but her presence didn't ruin the show.

Alternatively, they could adopt my boss's tongue-in-cheek suggestion: introduce a black character and make him the murderer; that way, everybody's happy.

 

[Kataaran]

Is there really a rule? I'm surprised they can get away with that. If they're going for realism though then that pretty much means a village with a 99.9-100% white population.

 

[DevilEyes]

I'm torn here. On the one side if you go to many (but not all) rural areas you really won't find anyone from an ethnic background, so there is an element of being realistic here (if a small place like Midsummer having 200+ murders in 15 years could ever be construed as realistic!) but the other side of the coin is, to misqoute Kassidy Yates, maybe we should show things as they should/could be rather than as they are?

Not if your show is set in the present.

Or in the past but with aspirations of authenticity. The holoprogram was something more akin to a role playing game and wasn't trying to be realistic or meant to teach people about history.

 

[AJBryant]

maybe we should show things as they should/could be rather than as they are?

We already do that. The Doctor had a black companion palling around Shakespearean and Victorian England and Venice and never got a second glance...

 

[Starkers]

Yes but there have been black and asian people in England long before the 20th Century, they were a rarity but they were here. Just yesterday I was reading an article about Queen Victoria's Muslim man servent for example.

 

[Pauln6]

We have a running joke locally about folk in (real world) Midsomer Norton being a bunch of rather insular, inbred rebrobates but even so, it ISN'T realistic to have people from all over the UK (Welsh, Scottish etc) living or visiting in (fake) Midsomer but never having a single ethnic character. I've never watched an episode myself but if they have never even had a single ethnic guest star then that is a very shocking (and possibly unlawful) position to maintain on ideological grounds.

 

[Pingfah]

Hmm yes, ethnic minorities are rare in rural locations like this, but not to the point where a policy of refusing to employ black actors for the sake of legitimacy is a defensible stance.

 

[Captain Shaw]

This is the bit that got me...

.We’re the last bastion of Englishness and I want to keep it that way

So to be English you have to be white

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

This is the bit that got me...

.We’re the last bastion of Englishness and I want to keep it that way

So to be English you have to be white

It sounds like he personifies Daily Mail-reading man.

 

[Captain Shaw]

This is the bit that got me...

.We’re the last bastion of Englishness and I want to keep it that way

So to be English you have to be white

It sounds like he personifies Daily Mail-reading man.

I think the DM lot are the people he's aiming the show at.

 

[cultcross]

This is the bit that got me...

.We’re the last bastion of Englishness and I want to keep it that way

So to be English you have to be white

I think this is the part that sells it for me, too. I hate it when people's words are twisted to make them seem racist, but this little quote sinks him. He thinks that his little English cast will be ruined if there's one of them there ethnics in it. Then his Mail reading audience won't watch it anymore.

 

[Marc]

Having seen a lot of the eps I have to admit that I've never thought about the lack of non-white characters in the series.

Wonder if there was ever any mention in the books. Some character traits where carried over the from books (Barnaby's first DS being a homophobe) and others no (in the one book I read, Barnaby is a bit of a grump and didn't strike me as being particularly pleasant).

 

[AJBryant]

For the record, I love the show, but I would *not* want to live there -- Midsomer has way too high a mortality rate.

 

[Pauln6]

Having seen a lot of the eps I have to admit that I've never thought about the lack of non-white characters in the series.

Watch Eddie Murphy's movie, Boomerang. They tried to make a point about this kind of lazy racism, which I thought was rather clever.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Why has no one complained yet about the fatism on The Tudors?