Not coming over here and killing our villagers

Yesterday I had this link sent to me:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/uk-12741847

Like Ash Atalla (who, as producer of ‘The Office’ and ‘The IT Crowd’, is someone who warrants a prole walking in front of his wheelchair sprinkling rose petals before him), I don't watch the programme. However I wonder whether the colour of the villagers' faces really matters? I would suggest not, unless the storyline is going to deal with race. If it does it is always better to have 'minority' actors involved since white folk blacking-up looks ridiculous. Unless they happen to be singing 'Mammy', obviously. If it isn't a race-related plot, shouldn't it just be about whether the actor is any good? Is the producer actually saying that people will turn it on, see an ethnic face and then immediately turn it off on the grounds that black faces don’t 'belong' in Midsomer? I hope not. Maybe it is simply the 'realism' aspect, being that in the 'traditional' English village there simply isn’t the racial diversity that you find in, say, the east end of London. Fair enough, but also in the traditional English village there are not fifteen murders a year. In fact, in the traditional English village the best you can hope for is a cake sale. Try stretching that out for fourteen years.

It's a curious thing. Noone ever worries about the realism of Coronation Street do they, a street which has to be the only street in Salford with a population that verges upon Aryan. Until recently, ethnic minorities were represented by one slightly tanned man that resembled David Essex after a nice holiday. I can almost hear the producers asking each other "how dark shall we go?" before nodding in agreement after one trailblazer suggests "south of France?". And what did they have him do? Own a corner shop and steal men's wives. They may as well have dressed him as a Golly and have done with it.

And this is Manchester, so presumably (were it to be made by the same people) 'Midsomer' would be populated exclusively by actors so white they are in fact transparent. The only way you would know they were onscreen would be that one hazy form was standing over another hazy form, lamenting that it couldn't put up with the affairs any longer and had to do them in. We would then be treated to the sight of a pair of floating handcuffs being bundled into a police van.

At which point I might tune in.