Anyone who has watched British TV in recent years will recognise the truth of these sentiments, TV is now largely a procession of same-ish series all cast from a bizarrely small pool of actors.
The creeping dominance of ‘oh, that’ll do TV’ is a cause to weep for.
But faced with the cast of a high profile show daring to publicly voice the views expressed nightly by UK telly watchers, the nation’s writers reacted on Twitter with a barrage of protests and accusations of unprofessionalism on the part of the cast.
Any dissenters from that line were firmly dealt with by the legions of angry telly-scribes, responding to suggestions that they’d polished a few of the poorer scripts one New Tricks writer said the cast had written “not a fucking comma” of his script.
Well writers may not like to hear it, but many of us do find TV bland and simplistic. In the race for viewers broadcasters – even the BBC – seem to have adopted a policy of commissioning shows which never challenge the knowledge or world view of its audience.
Actors are the public face of a TV show, and it’s they the public warm to and turn away from when shows hit their peaks and troughs. It’s understandable then that the New Tricks cast wanted to tell their audience they knew the show isn’t as good as it once was.
Blander than it used to be, New Tricks returns to BBC One on Monday 27th August.
