Here we are at a new low in television drama, a low point lower than the one before, a sub-nadir, a television basement that even a couple of years ago I might have said we'd never reach.
An exploitative, ugly, unrealistic, derivative drama written to a nasty, brutish equation that will either make you stretch out and yawn or sit up and despair, depending on your view of modern television drama.
It was called Mayday (BBC One, Sunday-Thursday, 9pm) and it was on for five nights in a row. It simply would not go away. Night after night, it bobbed to the surface, smelling of the desperation of schedulers who are fast losing their audience. Who has five consecutive nights to sit in front a TV screen? We're all far too busy sitting in front of a computer screen.
There will be some viewers who are prepared to make an exception for good drama, but Mayday was not good drama. The problem started with the opening seconds – which were horrible, misogynistic and disturbing. They focused on the murder victim – beautiful, blonde and thin, of course – cycling down a lane in slow-motion with her shampoo-advert hair flowing behind her. The implication was that the killer was staring desirously at her from the bushes and we were invited to do the same thing then move in for a close-up when she was strangled (we got that in episode five).
To add to this voyeurism and misogyny, we then had five hours of the worst kind of misanthropy and misandry that suggested every man in the village where the victim lived was horrible and nasty and base. The writers were probably trying to make a point about how paranoid we've all become about sexual crime – how we suspect everybody around us – but they made it with a graceless lack of subtlety that turned every man into the most grotesque distortion of reality. Every drama – even drama set on another planet – has to be set in a community that feels real for it to matter. But in Mayday nobody did anything remotely real; instead, almost everyone did everything in the most comically sinister way. How does anyone get anything done in this village when they have to do so much of it in slow motion?
According to the pre-screening publicity, the whole thing was inspired by an edition of Crimewatch, which might explain the nihilistic, unpleasant tone; the queasy feeling that this was the most horrible headline turned into entertainment – paranoid drama for those who enjoy paranoid journalism. No wonder it was unengaging at best and disgusting at worst. Who wants to stay around for five days of drama when it is made, without flair or creativity, from real headlines about murder and crime?
To judge by the reaction to Mayday online, most viewers were simply bewildered by how awful it was; some were appalled by its lack of insight into human behaviour. But I just ask a question I have asked before here, and, in the wake of Mayday, ask a little more desperately: where is the drama that matters because it reflects as well as projects? Where is the drama about me and you?
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