Midsomer Murders have been at it for years, but in an Agatha Christie lots of bodies, fixed group of suspects and all neatly sorted in the end style. Reasonable entertainment for those of us who like that kind of thing but still fantastical. In the last week or so we have had Mayday, the start of Broadchurch and now Shetland – all dramas about small communities in the eye of tragic storms that sweep them into the glare of police and media.
With our own community in the midst of a critical stage of our own experience of that storm, a storm that began a bit over a year ago, it all feels a bit too close. And yet I have been watching. I am intrigued as I always am by whodunits, but also feel uncomfortable, voyeuristic. The TV shows are fiction, designed to draw us in, ‘no-one was harmed in the making of this movie’ and all that. But in the midst of a murder trial locally, perhaps I am just displacing my feelings about following the local press and keeping up to date with the case. I can make a defence for it on pastoral grounds – the need to be aware of what may be facing the community from this month long drip, drip of news and stories. But I know that both the curious bit and the detective TV fan in me would be following it anyway and, knowing the real lives that have been impacted in big or small ways, it makes me feel guilty for being interested.
Sometimes the dramas are on the doorstep, and horrible things can happen in idyllic places just as wonderful things can be glimpsed in the most hellish. (What is the opposite of idyllic anyway?) People are people with all our weaknesses and strengths wherever we are, but times like this are a reminder that the picture we show one another can be a long way from the reality behind closed doors, and leave us questioning what we thought we knew.
A ripe context for any drama or novel to gather from, and it seems to be a flourishing harvest at the moment.
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