Just yesterday, I wrote about the egregious commercial sin of defining others’ desires and preferences as “wrong.” While it is something we’ve all done from time to time, a commercial concern can’t afford it. You cannot sell dead cats to the Board of Sanitation. Similarly, you cannot sell “diversity” to an audience that’s looking for something non-diverse.
This morning, in support of my entirely innocent thesis, I found this article courtesy of AoSHQ:
Old shows, which debuted over a decade ago, dominated the top streamed list of 2023. Several of the programs, including “Suits,” “Gilmore Girls,” and “Friends” have been off the air for years.
According to Nielsen, the most streamed acquired shows of 2023 were: [table omitted, but the shows are Suits, Bluey (Disney’s only highly rated show, and they don’t produce it, they merely license it), NCIS, Gray’s Anatomy, Cocolmelon, The Big Bang Theory, The Gilmore Girls, Friends, Heartland, and Supernatural].
Many of these shows also have a persistent nostalgia factor. The New York Times recently described “Gilmore Girls” as “an endless buffet of TV comfort food.”
Ace provides his take, of course:
Oh, as opposed to the “daring” “quality” shit that streamers produce themselves?
Maybe the incredible shift from favoring talent and experience in the writers room, to favoring simple quota-driven diversity, might have something to do with the rejection of newer shows:
It seems great minds really do think alike. But I digress.
Quite some time ago, the C.S.O. and I discovered the huge British police-procedural hit Midsomer Murders. “The deadliest county in England!” proclaimed the promos, and it was so. But for the first thirteen seasons, which starred the great John Nettles as the urbane and polished Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby, Midsomer County wasn’t just lethal; it was also almost completely…drum roll, please…white.
Producer Brian True-May came under fire for that. So what if he’d produced the most popular British programme of all time, with a viewership that could only be eclipsed by the Second Coming? There were no blacks in it! There were no Pakistanis or Indians in it! And his interrogators wanted to know why. So, being a forthright sort, he told them:
In March 2011, the series’ producer, Brian True-May, was suspended by All3Media after telling the TV listings magazine Radio Times that the programme did not have any non-white characters, because the series was a “bastion of Englishness”. When challenged about the term “Englishness” and whether that would exclude different ethnic minorities, True-May responded: “Well, it should do, and maybe I’m not politically correct”. He later went on to say that he wanted to make a programme “that appeals to a certain audience, which seems to succeed”. True-May’s comments were investigated by the production company. He was reinstated, having apologised “if his remarks gave unintended offence to any viewers”, but he has since stepped down as producer.
The following series (series 15) saw Asian characters appear on the show in the episodes “The Dark Rider” and “Written in the Stars”,[14] though an Asian character had previously appeared in “Orchis Fatalis”. Also, series 15 introduces more black characters, although previously they had been seen in background scenes, but had not had many speaking roles except for the Crown Prosecutor in the episode “Last Year’s Model” (Series 9, episode 8), who was a black female, and in the episode “Dance With The Dead”, in which two black men were among the dancers at a 1940s-themed party. Also, in episode 3 of season 11 (“Left for Dead”), the character Charlotte/Charlie (played by Indra Ové as the adult version and Jade Gould as the younger version) appeared to be of mixed race.
Brian True-May had done something incredible and intolerable: he’d given the viewing public something it wanted to watch, but without bowing to “diversity.” Never mind that it was the most watched programme in England. Never mind that it was equally hot on the Continent and in the DownUnder countries. Too many whites!
So True-May was purged. The results speak for themselves.
I can’t imagine what faithful British viewers of the programme thought of the changes. They knew full well that English village life was really as True-May’s casting decisions had portrayed it: extremely non-diverse. But the series has continued on. Today the considerably less appealing Neil Dudgeon has replaced John Nettles. Black and Asian characters now dominate Midsomer village life.
And one more bastion of Western Civilization, the English country village with its charming cottages and shops, has fallen to the “diversocrats.” I have no idea what the show’s recent viewership figures are, so I can’t say how they compare to those of the True-May / Nettles era. But I can tell my Gentle Readers that the show has lost at least one American household.
Success? Massive, extremely loyal viewership? Bah! What matters is diversity. Ask the producers at Disney.
2 comments
Makes me wonder when PBS will get it’s hooks into “All Creatures Great and Small”, which is also English countryside and all white. Never mind that it’s historical and based on the books.
Too many to count. This is something that generally infuriates me. The wife and I were perusing a series called “Fool me once” – a limited run of I believe ten episodes – and it takes place in England and centers around a British woman combat veteran (around 5’1”, maybe 100 pounds) who of course files attack helicopters and is an expert in hand to hand and makes men twice her size cower in fear – all of those men are of course are authentic Englishmen who are portrayed as out of shape, deadbeats, weak-willed, with some sort of problem like drinking.
The woman in question could best be described as “mystery meat”, her sister who is murdered at the beginning of the series is also mm. The protagonists in-laws are the quintessential English semi-aristocratic family; WASP’y, but portrayed as soulless degenerates. At a meeting between the protagonist and her mother-in-law, the protagonist tells the m-i-l, “I know you never wanted me to marry Joe. You never thought I was good enough.” And the m-i-l responds with an icy, “You’re correct, you’re not our people.” Thus setting the stage for the rest of the episodes. The cop investigating the sisters murder is a swarthy Indian – although in all honesty, he is a likable character. His superior is of course a bitchy, no-trace-of-any-femininity white female. His partner is a well-spoken, clean-cut, well-dressed and in shape, White Englishman, who is of course gay as a French trombone. As a science fiction fan, don’t even get me started on the latest installment of Dune!