Apoptygma

Monday, September 15, 2003

But I am Merlin I tells ya!

What is it about the weekend that makes me throw my carefully planned and strictly adhered to diet out of the window? Sausage rolls, crisps, biscuits, bacon butties, beer, wine…you name it, I scoffed it…ah well, I ain’t as bad as this fat fuck. What it doesn’t tell you is that he keels over outside and dies of a massive coronary and it took 3 days for his body to burn…

So, there I am, over the weekend, probably stuffing the hundredth biscuit into my gob while watching the new Series of Casualty but, with a sense of dread, realise that I’m probably going to have to stop watching from now onwards. Why? Well, there’s two plot conventions I HATE that TV programmes use:
A) Introducing an American “character” patently played by an English Actor; I’m thinking Vicky Fowler in Dull-Enders, I’m thinking Dexter Fletcher in PressGang and what’s this? A new American paediatrician, Jim Brodie, in Casualty with an accent so bad, he must’ve gone to the Dick Van Dyke school for bad accents, and graduated with Honours…Jeeez…”Hey toots”…”awww gimme a break”…”Hey, I’m outya here” etc etc
B) When they replace one actor playing a much-loved character with another and hoping the audience i) won’t notice ii) won’t mind if they do notice. I’m thinking now of Nick Tilsley in Corrie, Mark Fowler in Dull-Enders and now Merlin in Casualty. “I’m Merlin, I’m a doctor, let me through”.."I’m Merlin I tells ya!”…”Oh Merlin, great you’re here…Merlin”…”Let Merlin through please, he’s Merlin” etc..And I’m thinking, eh? Wodda fuck! He ain’t Merlin!!…Christ, I hate it when they do this, kill the character off, offer the actor a shed load more money but DO NOT replace the actor with another one, especially one that looks nothing like the old fella

There’s a phrase for this kind of thing, where TV programmes loose their credibility, where they loose the audience, “Jumping the Shark” dunno why, but this site lists all those terrible moments in TV history where you know it’s going downhill, when they introduce famous guest characters, resurrect dead characters, Bobby in Dallas is a classic or take the show outside it's usual home, re-locate in another part of the world is a much used one, Friends in London?...loads like these.

Ruined it for me now, will have to ban it from the living room on Saturday evenings, the missus will just have to watch it upstairs on the portable. I have my principles damnit!