Whodunnit . . . and Why?

The 'Who-done-it,' (or should it be spelt whodunnit?) is a format of many a television series, stage play film or radio drama. They seem to be a regular fixture in television schedules. What is it about them that makes them so popular, not only with schedulers and producers, but the general viewing public? Generally speaking, they have a familiar element to them, rather like a soap opera (EastEnders, Coronation Street, Emmerdale come to mind, but also the BBC Radio 4 Soap, The Archers, which, amazingly, celebrates it's 70th anniversary in 2020, making it the world's longest-running drama series.) Usually set it a familiar environment, a village, a closed society or environment, such as a railway train, stuck in a snowstorm or on a cruise liner, or most likely, a country house, usually isolated from the rest of the world, or an island. Then we have a relatively small group, many or even all are suspects in a murder and then the crime is solved by an outsider (usually) who has a knack of resolving the crime and will search for clues and interview all the suspects and eventually, at the climax of the show, reveal who the murderer is.

It amazes me that some of the locations in which these shows are set that nobody thinks it's strange, the number of murders which are committed. Just think of 'Midsummer Murders', which has been running for goodness knows how long, that there is a murder in that area of the country every week. Surely there's more than the average number of homicides than the rest of the United Kingdom? Why doesn't someone look it to such things? And would you choose to live in such a village if you knew that the murder statistics were above average? Would you avoid such a place? The same with the village in which the BBC1 daytime drama, 'Father Brown' is set, the almost cliched Cotswold village of Kembleford or the village in which Agatha Raisin lives in? Likewise, St Mary Mead, where Miss Marple resides? And what always gets me with these shows, how the detective just happens to be around not long after the murder occurs or at least, as soon as the body is discovered. How come whenever Poirot or Miss Marple goes on holiday, or visits a certain place, no soon have they turned up THAN THE MURDER TAKES PLACE and they are called upon to investigate. And often the amateur sleuths get in the way of the police, and usually manage to solve the crime before the professionals, who invariably get the culprit wrong! Their investigations are generally a total disaster and the amateur sleuth makes them look totally inept.

Most 'whodunnits' follow the same format, with usually the scene being set, in most cases in an enclosed environment, such as a country house, village, or as in the case of two of Agatha Christie's novels, a railway train (Murder on The Orient Express) or a cruise line on the River Nile (Death On The Nile), with the detective just coincidentally being around somewhere when the murder is discovered, then the bulk of the novel revolves around the suspects being interviewed and the clues gathered. Usually we have a small cast of characters, who we discover have good reasons to possibly be the murderer and at the end the detective reveals who the murderer is.

Some 'Whodunnits,' aren't about murder. Better to actually call them mysteries, because that is really the basic plot, because there is the secret at the heart of the plot, or mystery, of who did the crime. They can be about theft, such as some of the Sherlock Holmes stories, written by Arthur Conan Doyle, such as The Scandal In Bohemia.

In effect a 'Whodunnit' is a bit like a knot. There's something which has to be unravelled, a mystery (usually, but not always, a murder.) and it can only be unravelled when an investigator/detective, either professional or amateur, can piece together all the evidence and then decide who was responsible. This person, either male or female, tends to stand apart from the group of characters who are suspects, has a very keen mind and is able to see all sides and the come up with an answer so that the murderer can be bought to justice. Quite often the amateur sleuth gets to the result quicker than the professionals, who are often seen as bungling and incompetent and probably come up with entirely the wrong solution and suspect the wrong person as the murderer.

The detective, whether they are professional or amateur, is often portrayed as having flaws or at least appears separate from the world of the suspects in a 'whodunnit.' One can mention, as an example, Sherlock Holmes, more like a computing system, who is high-performing, in that he is a single man, who can identify clues which other people cannot. It is almost as if he is O.C.D.  (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) or he's at least on the autism spectrum, most likely he has Asperger's. He finds it difficult to make friends (apart from his companion, John Watson.) but he uses his compulsive behaviour to assist in his investigations. Also, he has a drug habit, which, no doubt, also aids (or even hinders) his investigations.

Other detectives, such as Morse, in the Colin Dexter novels (which were made into a highly successful television series which starred John Thaw.) is a divorcee, is grumpy and has a love of classical music and drives around in a Jaguar, have 'fatal flaws,' (or hamarthia,) which helps develop them as characters and explains their nature.

Telephone Troubles

My Diazepam tablets ran out yesterday. I am only given them in batches of 10. This is because they can become addictive and sometimes, if taken regularly, your body gets used to them and they become ineffective. I had to ring Ashfield Medical Centre this morning to at least get a doctor's appointment to either give me a repeat prescription or give me an alternative that have the same effect. They help me sleep and I'm not lying awake in bed at 2.30a.m. with all my problems going through my head, the biggest one being when will the D.W.P. sort out the possible pension that Carol had when she lived and worked in Bournemouth and the fact that I'm not being paid my full rent through Housing Benefit. With this in mind I began ringing at around 8.25 and eventually got through at 8.35. I'm still uncertain what time they are supposed to open the lines, because, before they answer, you just get a sort of engaged tone. Then, when I did eventually get through, there were no more than four other people in the queue in front of me. That infernal music you have to endure has changed, when you are put on hold, and the woman's voice who tells you 'we have a high volume of calls at the moment,' and 'sorry for keeping you waiting,' sounds less angry. Why did she sound so angry to me and similar to the voice of Shula in the BBC radio soap 'The Archers'? Sorry, but to me she does, and it's almost as if this 'voice' has a sort of tone to it suggesting, 'get off my line, I'm busy, and I don't want to be disturbed!' Then I eventually got to be first in the queue and I was ACTUALLY SPEAKING TO A HUMAN! what ever is the world coming to? I explained why I was ringing and then was told I should have rung another number for repeat prescriptions, which opened after 11a.m. Having given my date of birth and then name (I suppose they have to do this, so as to make sure that they're dealing with the right patient and that you don't get someone else's medications and it would no doubt be a contravention of G.D.P.R. (General Data Protection Regulation, yet another E.U.-imposed bit imposed legislation which I bet hasn't been voted on democratically in the E.U. parliament and no doubt invented by some faceless bureaucrat, or am I just being a pessimist?) I said that, because it wasn't on a repeat list, as are all my heart medications, I should perhaps have an appointment with one of the doctors to discuss this, also, how I was coping with taking the Diazepam, any side-effects etc etc. So, at the end of the conversation I was left none the wiser and hopefully going to get a call-back from one of the doctors when she told me that she would pass the information on to the duty doctor who was assigned to deal with appointments, once he or she had heard what the appointment was about.

There's absolutely no certainty at what time the call-back from the doctor is going to be. I can be barely an hour or two, but it was getting nearer and nearer to midday when they still hadn't returned my call. I went upstairs and was laying on my bed when the phone rang and I ran downstairs to the phone in the hall (that is, the landline phone) and picked up the phone, expecting it to be one of the doctors with the awaited ring-back. It wasn't. A foreign-sounding woman with an Oriental sound to it, telling me she was 'from the Windows department' which immediately rang bells, as I could tell it wasn't a curtesy call. I know, from  really nasty experience, that all these calls are a scam, they just want to get into your computer system and hack your details, bank account numbers and so on. I told her I knew it was a scam and told her to get off my phone and all I got back was a load of expletives F you B . . . F you B . . .  F you B . . . which told me all I needed to know, so I immediately put the telephone down. You know the old saying 'once bitten, twice shy,' which is about all you need to know. For a  start, no sooner had she said she was from the Windows department and that 'there's a problem with your computer,' I knew it was a scam because I don't have a Windows computer. End of story.

I had another of these 'scam' calls, this time on my iPhone. I can't see where they get my number, landline or mobile. I don't intentionally give my numbers out and they shouldn't actually be phoning me because I'm signed up to the preference service which is supposed to stop these unsolicited calls. Then there are those calls that, when you pick them up, nobody answers and there's just a long silence until you get this weird 'good bye,' at the end. What is that all about?

Later I got yet another call, from of all people, Sky. They knew that I had closed down my Sky Television account and even gone as far as sending back the Q Box and all the paraphernalia that went with it, including the cables and the two remotes. Sky sent the packaging, very cleverly posted in a flat-pack format and you have to assemble it yourself and use peel-off adhesive strips to keep it all together, along with pre-paid postage labels. But I wasn't swayed by the marketing tactics of the young man on the other end of the phone. I said I now had Freeview and I had no intention of resubscribing, basically because of the cost and the fact that I didn't need even half of the channels. Apart from that, the Panasonic Freeview box I now have is perfectly adequate. It allows you to record and also you can use catch-up with such things as BBC iPlayer, as well as having a dedicated Netflix button and if you look carefully, such things as YouTube and even Amazon Prime video, which means you don't need to set up the Fire Stick which can be quite touch and go whether it will work properly.

Further Little Niggles

A further blog post about those annoyances that make life difficult or impossible and, without them, things would go just that bit better. Not just niggles, but also meanderings and whitterings. I shall publish this as it is, but add to it as the day goes on, so if you read this at 8.00 a.m. it is not going to be the same by the end of the day as I intend adding to it as the day progresses.

How about parking machines? I'm talking about those ticket machines which are set up, mainly by local authorities, which you are supposed to use when you go into town and want to park your car. They generally take One Pound coins and you put them into the slot provided and then, a couple of seconds later, they fall out the slot where your change comes out. Oh, on second thoughts, they don't give change, or, at least, those in and around the Milton Keynes Central Shopping Centre. Why is this? It seems a bit of a cheat, they would charge you if you didn't have a ticket in the first place, or you arrive back at your parked vehicle, having spent a small fortune in the shops, laden with packages. Is it your fault that your time was taken up in a queue in a certain store? Some old dear at the check-out, counting out her cash, a mountain of 1p and 2p pieces? Or people who can't find their debit or credit card, or some such similar hold-up? If you know you will need these items, why not have them handy, so there isn't a hold-up at the checkout? And, while we're on the subject of checkouts, if you use a self-service checkout, why do you have to have that awful voice which keeps telling you that there's an 'unexpected item in bagging area,' or having you every flaw shouted at you so the entire supermarket can hear. I don 't mind using the machines, but why have a voice, usually sounding like a grumpy old aunty shouting at you for misbehaving. Or mechanical voices in general. Another is in lifts. Who are they for? 'Doors opening' and 'doors closing,' Are they for the benefit of those with poor eyesight, the visually impaired (not supposed to say 'blind' as it's not 'Politically Correct.') Surely if you had a visual impairment, your hearing would be better than if you had sight, you would know well enough when the doors in a lift open or close. you would sense when this happens. You would feel the lift moving. it's just because THEY CAN put a mechanical voice in a list that there is one. And, a further thought, who records the voices in the first place? It's the same when you top up your mobile, the irritating female who is supposed to guide you through the operation. Is it some out of work Equity member who couldn't get a job working on EastEnders or who failed her audition for the R.S.C. or National Theatre. What a job! Standing in a recording studio and just saying 'doors opening' or 'doors closing,' how many 'takes' did they do to get the right inflection? Angry, pleased, frustrated?  You can only imagine. Why not do different voices for all of these? Or actors who work on radio shows such as 'The Archers.'

Why are the traffic lights in Milton Keynes so slow to change? There are several sets in and around the centre, along Witan Gate near Sainsbury's. You can drive along Witan Gate and then stop at each set. Surely they could be set so as to allow you to keep moving and not have to stop at the next set. Or is that too easy? The ones near Sainsbury's take far too long to change. There's no reason as the traffic along Witan Gate is generally not too busy. I usually go to Sainsbury's by going along Saxon Street (which is the main route from where we live in Eaglestone.) and then turn at the traffic lights near Debenhams and along Avebury Boulevard. The set of lights near Debenham's take an inordinately long time to change. Is it to allow busses time to come out from the stopping place they have near The Point? There has to be so reason. Surely no traffic lights should be set to hold up traffic for more than 20 seconds at the most. Just another little niggle.

I've been into the centre of Milton Keynes this morning. To go to the Central Shopping Centre. I manage to park in the surface carpark near The Point. Incidentally, why has this ironic Milton Keynes building been left to rot? The multiplex cinema complex behind is left empty. It looks in a really bad state. This was the first multiplex complex in this country. I know things move on, and we have a brand new cinema complex near the MK Stadium, but it seems scandalous that The Point, that pyramid-shaped construction which is a sort of symbol of Milton Keynes, along with the concrete cows, is at the point of no return. It looks scruffy and rusty. There used to be a nightclub inside it and when it was lit up you could see it for miles away, particularly when I lived in Bedford I drove over to Milton Keynes in my car at night, you could see it quite clearly on the hill from the road when you drove in from the Stagsden/Chichley/Newport Pagnall road.

A lot of black crows hanging around in the carpark. I've seen them several times when I park in that carpark. Quite creepy. They perch in trees as you cross the road into the shopping centre. It makes me think of the Alfred Hitchcock film 'The Birds.' Carol says she sees  similar birds hanging around the Academy and doesn't like walking past them. They are actually quite harmless, but being black and having that sort of gothic look, as well as long beaks that look as if they might give you a nasty peck, I can see why she doesn't like them. A sort of cliche used in movies and television dramas, suggest death, foreboding and so on. A sort of Hammer movie cliche I suppose. Short-hand for death and destruction. 

Listening To Radio Four- Part 1

I was thinking to myself the other day how my interest in such things as literature, theatre and comedy have been influenced by BBC Radio Four. Most people, as they grow from adolescence to adulthood, listen mainly to what is commonly known as 'pop' music, and the form of delivery for this is via radio. In the 1960's we had pirate radio, such as Radio Caroline, which operated illegally from just outside the mainland of Great Britain. I do have a slight connection to this station (but only slightly, I may add.) Radio Caroline was broadcast from a ship which was anchored in the North Sea just off the Essex coast near where my family spent it's summer holidays, at Frinton-On-Sea. You could see this ship clearly from the promenade at Frinton, where we rented a beach hut for the two weeks at the beginning of September each year. One year there was a mighty storm at night and the ship on which Radio Caroline was broadcast from came adrift from its anchorage and ran aground on the Frinton beach. It made the headlines in the national newspapers over the next week of or two. In 1967 (or thereabouts) the then Labour government, under Harold Wilson, made pirate radio stations illegal, apparently because they were supposed to interfere with broadcasts for the lifeguard service. Radio Caroline (and other similar pirate stations) were put out of business and the good old BBC was tasked with creating a replacement radio station, which was to be called, rather unimaginatively, Radio One (because the remaining BBC radio stations were to become Radio 2 (formerly The Light Programme), Radio 3 (formerly The Third Programme), The Home Service became Radio Four. No doubt it was the obvious numbering of these stations that gave them their names, so to have a new station called Radio One was logical. I've not actually been a particular fan of 'pop' music, preferring classical music, but I do enjoy some bits of pop. I think if I have to have any sort of pop radio station on I prefer Radio 2, because, frankly, I can't stand commercial pop stations such as Heart which is awful. The adverts are really appalling and seem to play to the lowest common denominator. It was better when it was Chiltern and Horizon. They've just made it into a sort of mush, basically for financial reasons. Terrible. They must think their audience are really dim or something, the tone of the presenters.

Why am I mentioning all this? I suppose because when I was growing up I tended to listen to Radio Four. My parents always had it on in the house.  My father had to listen to the weather forecast because he was a farmer and the weather was important to him, particularly at harvest-time.) It was probably the main source of news and always seemed to be on at lunchtime. We had an ancient radio in the kitchen at Malting Farm, kept on a shelf high up on a wall, which took a time to warm up before it worked (I think most things needed 'warming up' in those days, before transistors became popular and replaced valves in things. The television we had, a black and white model, took some time to warm up. A good many years before the introduction of colour in the early 1970's.)

Radio Four must be unique. It's an all-speech channel. I can't imagine a commercial version because I don't imagine the audience figures are particularly high, so it would never survive on advertising alone. It broadcasts a wide range of material across such things as documentaries, arts, media, light entertainment, comedy (light entertainment covers panel shows and sitcoms and sketch shows.) as well as soap opera (The Archers would fall into this category. It's supposed to be the longest running drama or soap in the world, running for something like 65 years. In fact, it's one year younger than me.)

I got hooked on adaptations of books which were (and probably still are) broadcast on Radio Four. For example, some of Daphne Du Maurier's novels. which lead me to read many of them, particularly 'Rebecca' and 'Jamaica Inn.' I think I'd written them off as being somewhat female-orientated (which perhaps they are, to some extent.) but then, once I'd read them, I discovered that there was far more to them, particularly 'Rebecca' which is really gripping and has a mystery about it. She does atmosphere and character really well. Definitely page turners. The books have been adapted for both radio and television, and of course 'Rebecca' was famously made into a film by Alfred Hitchcock, with Laurence Olivier in the role of Max DeWinter. She also wrote another, the later novel which was called 'The House On The Strand' which was done well on the radio. There's something about a radio adaptation, you have to concentrate more than with a visual medium. There's no way you can get away with the scenery dominating, flashy camera-work etc with a totally aural adaptation of course.

Cliche and Over-Worked Plots In television soaps

In my last post I managed to hint at a subject which intrigues me a great deal and that is the subject of cliche, nowhere more prevalent than in the area of films and television soaps. If you watch soaps on television you will no doubt be aware of the over-use of certain story lines, stereotypes etc. I cannot actually see what the attraction of soaps is, although  in the past I have been caught up in the long-running story lines of soaps such as Brookside (long since cancelled), Emmerdale, EastEnders, Coronation Street and the only radio soap left, The Archers. Admittedly, it has to be said, it must be extremely hard to keep a soap going for 52 weeks of a year, and there must be times when there is nothing much happening as regards plot. But then there are big stories that are supposed to hook the viewer, usually at peak times of the year, most notably at Christmas. The cliche of the big Christmas 'reveal' around the dinner table in EastEnders, Den giving Angie the divorce papers in EastEnders was during a Christmas episode and consequently the rating soared to record levels. Some long-running soap story lines do 'hook' the audience, for example the Trevor Jordache 'body under the patio' in Brookside which ran and ran and was a definite 'hook' (I have to admit I was caught up in it during the 1990's.)

It has often intrigued me about soap and that is, why do the characters live and work in such a small area, i.e. a small northern backstreet,  an east-end square that  is run-down, etc etc and not only live and work there, but form relationships with one another in such a small area, why do they never seem to do what the rest of us do and not move away from such a small area?  I know, you're thinking to yourself as you read this, "well, it's not real. It is drama, and it isn't supposed to be real." But that doesn't excuse the fact that it doesn't bear any resemblance to how the 'real' world acts and behaves so we can at least identify with what we're watching. For example, why is it they never seem to move away from that little closed world as the rest of the world does? Some do seem to go outside the confines of this small world, but when they do they never seem to return or are forgotten. Perhaps it's because of the soap format, the restrictions of the soap 'form' because if they do the soap can't work. In that respect I find it so boring, so depressing and unimaginative. I suppose the story lines have to work within such a restrictive format because it is an open-ended form of drama, because it is expected to run several time a week, for 52 weeks of the year. For me, I have to say I prefer something which ties up within one episode or over a set number of episodes. We rarely get single dramas or plays on television as we used to have in the 1960's or '70, with such strands as 'Play of the Month', 'The Wednesday Play', 'Play For Today' or 'Armchair Theatre.' It's a pity that everything seems to fit into a series slot, either crime, mystery, who-done-it, medical, etc etc. There's nowhere to go for a 'one-off' story. The BBC have done daytime drama series, such as 'Moving On' which has a sort of theme, but all the stories are told over a 45-minute running time and don't relate one to the other with stories overlapping or having returning characters. A bit like short stories in the printed form as opposed to long-form writing with, say, novels.

Why do soaps get such high ratings? Could it be that it's actually a habit-forming sort of drama. Soaps are on several times a week and at the same time. Also, people are drawn to the gossipy element, everyone love to 'find out' the latest bit of juicy gossip, which is always carried by the tabloid newspapers. Soap seems to sell newspapers so it's a sort of cyclical thing, soaps drive sales, the audience for soaps soar and round and round it goes.

I do seem to have wandered off the topic of cliche, but never mind. Once I get going on a subject such as this it is always so easy to get onto another area. I'm just interested in why people get so hooked on soap, unfortunately they don't have much else on that they can get their teeth into. Soaps seem to make good topics for the tabloids whenever they use social issues as the basis for story lines. It was usually such playwrights such as Dennis Potter, Mike Leigh and all those who wrote for the BBC series such as 'Play For Today' and 'The Wednesday Play' which used such subjects as homelessness which made those plays so memorable.

EastEnders and Coronation Street are one big cliche without going into too much detail. Corrie is stuck in some sort of late '50's early 60's time warp.  EastEnders is stuck in a sort of 1980's time warp. Do people still live in backstreets like that? Wouldn't that area have been bought up by developers and been bulldozed long ago and been replaced with a retail park, modern houses and business premises? As for EastEnders, can someone please explain how it is no one in Albert Square owns a washing machine? And from experience I have used quite a few laundrettes, but the one near Albert Square has staff who DO YOUR WASHING FOR YOU and the place looks dirty and uncared-for and would most certainly put off customers. Why, whenever the writers want to kill off a character or characters do they have someone run into or run over by a car, when there are surely no more than half a dozen cars in the Square and that person just happens to walk into a car when there are no other cars about and there's no through-traffic? Ludicrous and silly, to say the least. How is it so many of he EastEnders characters can afford to spend so much time in the Vic pub (the same can be said of Corrie in the Rover's and Emmerdale in the Woolpack.) and they drink excessive amounts of alcohol yet can still stand up straight and walk in a straight line. Most people would have permanent hang-overs and be falling all over the place. No one seems to have a job that would earn them enough to be able to afford to buy the homes they live in. Most of the houses in that area of London would be worth far more than they could afford.

I could go on. I may return to this subject in future posts.