Midsomer Murders creator explains why he wants to keep his murders white:
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.’
Racist, obnoxious, outrageous, call it what you want, but it’s the creative bankruptcy of his statement that explains why I’ve never watched a full eposde of Midsomer Murders. As if you can’t get that specific brand of sophorific excitement with the occasional Black or Asian face, as if the cozy menace can’t be created without some pasty white 1930ties England that never was.
Lee
March 18, 2011 at 3:22 amAs you say, you’ve never watched a full episode. That’s your choice and your right, as it is the case for those people who enjoy watching the show for precisely the reasons why you don’t.