Mrs. Teabody Thanks Television for a Bearable Reality

Blame the rain. Someone should.
Blame John Mulaney's horse that's loose inside the hospital. I do.
Blame  frustration for the world as we know it. Why would you not?

But all of this blame-making wants clarification. That is what Mrs. Teabody does best. So pour yourself a cuppa of your favorite freshly-brewed loose leaf tea and get comfortable. We're in for a bumpy and extended ride. And do I actually have to tell you to turn off the tv? I thought as much. At least have the decency to push pause. Ta very much.

Let's lead with this: I watch too much television.  Perhaps you do, too. With a few decades here and there when I BY CHOICE eschewed the companionship afforded by the  glowing tubes, I have been watching television for more than sixty years. SIXTY. Now that's a helluva lot of Mickey Mouse Club, American Bandstand, Twilight Zone,  and Johnny Carson. That is decades of Days of our Lives,  Search for Tomorrow and wondering for an entire year who shot J.R. . Television drew me to its side for space launches, assassinations, royal weddings and at least ten years worth of Jeopardy. Not a very sporting person ever, I confess a summer enjoying the Baltimore Orioles, a few seasons  of being caught up in the St. Louis Hawks, and, while in this confessional mood, at least a dozen beauty pageants. Hemmed in by mountains and no way of getting to them much less past them, television brought the wide world into my purview. The tube was my way out.

My interest in prime time and lives led by others eventually waned, but I was riveted by the Jane Pauley years on the Today Show.  Such a smart woman looking at events of the world through the filter of intelligence. A woman who was not a mere ornament. She expressed what I felt but could not vocalize. Her tenure was brief, her replacement a disappointment. I had seen greatness and loved it.

Just when I was ready to give up on  television altogether some errant waves broke through the barriers of trees and mountains and something miraculous happened: public television. Yes. It was now possible for nerdy folks like me to watch that damned boring highbrow stuff that everyone else I knew hated. And watch it I did: PBS featured plays, well written dramas, documentaries. At last I could watch programming that was thoughtful and inspirational.  I could enjoy shows that did not rely on a rehash of the same old orange car careening airborne, scantily-clad ingenues or sit coms whose single most anticipated weekly moment revolved around a single catch-phrase like Gallll -alll-alll-all-leee or Git-er-done or Whatch you talking about, Willis . Never you mind that reception for PBS was iffy. Out there somewhere  I knew there were like-minded people who read books, who cared about history, who gave a rat's hiney about Shakespeare. And as far as I was concerned, average television programming did about as much to stimulate thought and creativity as marshmallow whip did to flatten a gut. I am human. I wanted diversion. But I'm also picky. Marginally. I lived for Bravo, A&E, Masterpiece Theatre. However, just when I thought regular prime time television could not get any worse, reality television hit the airwaves giving the world freak shows like Jersey Shore, Jerry Springer, and other ENTERTAINMENT that appealed to the basest of instincts. And QVC. Heaven help us. 127 channels and nothing worth watching. I spent 37 years meeting teenagers and their parents and NOT ONE of them behaved as abysmally as any of the people featured on popular prime time television. You draw your own conclusions about why such shows gained huge audiences. 

127 Channels and nothing worth watching

Now we need to slide across a span of twenty years until we arrive at that moment in time when we pulled the plug on cable tv. It started with Amazon Prime and a Firestick. It ended with Netflix, Acorn and Brit Box. Best decision I've made in years but not one without consequences. Coming off the first year of the horse being loose in the hospital, all of  cable television had a single focus: the world (as I knew it) was going to hell in a hand basket. Appropriately enough and in that vein, I chose HOUSE OF CARDS as my first binge watch of this new era of television watching. Through the filter of the politically corrupt Underwoods, I saw demons everywhere and became as depressed as a one-week-post-Christmas American child. Luckily for my psyche, I found THE WEST WING. It would prove my salvation. 

After two weeks of binge watching, I successfully made Martin Sheen my President.  He spoke well, looked out for the American people, told the truth almost all the time and had the beautiful audacity to feel guilty when he didn't. As if that wasn't enough wonderfulness, I had my beloved Allison Janney as White House spokeswoman. Pardon me while I GUSH over Allison Janney. Sarah who? Sean who? I have my administration; you have yours, thank you. It was then that I realized television had become my new reality.

When I had watched all the episodes of WEST WING ever created, you would have thought a massive depression would set in but nothing could be further from the truth. Because I had discovered (along with the rest of the thinking world)  BENEDICT TIMOTHY CARLTON CUMBERBATCH. Yes, my beloved detective of fiction, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, was now being portrayed by the brainy girls' equivalent to a sexy dancer on Magic Mike. Is there a smarter show than SHERLOCK on television? N.O. While deeply flawed in ever so many ways, Holmes is on the right side of things, and I want what Holmes strives for. Unfortunately, quality does not always come in baskets-ful. The creators of Sherlock churn out a season of three or four (Mon Dieu!) episodes. Quality but not much quantity.

Before I go further, you need to be told that the rest of this discussion will be based on British detective and mystery series television because that created world is my chosen reality. If a few recent conversations with close friends is any indication, this trend is widespread. Luckily for me and others of my persuasion, the series based on Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse series had been made into a television series and just as I exhausted Morse, I discovered Lewis and then the Lewis franchise segued into Endeavour  which is currently still in production. I write about my addiction for these three series here in The Teabodys Spend the Summer in Oxford .This year celebrates 30 years with programming loosely based on the Dexter novels and there is not a dog among them with Endeavour probably the best of the lot. It has a weekly dose of Anton Lesser as well as Shaun Evans and Roger Allam.  Any one of them is a compelling enough actor that he alone could carry a series. Three such talents is a banquet. Throw in the irresistible cinematography and the incredibly beautiful score by Barrington Pheloung, and you have restorative entertainment. And that's the truly glorious thing about British television: it has actually gotten better. I could and probably will write lovingly of LUTHER at some point and I confess the biggest girl crush of my life in Ashley Jensen especially as Agatha Raisin but that is fodder for another time. To know them is to love them.

Inspector Morse with sidekick Lewis

Young Endeavor Morse with Thursday

And now we come to the current heart of the matter, the two series currently dominating all my waking entertainment hours, SHETLAND and VERA both of which would not have been possible without the very real brain of the very real Ann Cleeves. I have written her a fan letter urging her to stay alive until I die. I've told her it's the right thing to do.

Very soon I will put aside this bit of drivel, make myself another cuppa and curl up on the sofa full of anticipation at spending a few hours with Detective Chief Inspector Vera Stanhope while the real world--the world I no longer live in rages on. My Vera will be wearing her unfashionable clothing along with her wrinkled Mac and battered fisherman's hat. She will be driving her 1996 Land Rover. She will drink liquor from a bottle in her loneliness and she will carp at and badger the folks she works closest with and loves best. But most importantly when the credits roll, the guilty will have been locked away for punishment, justice will have been served, and the world will look on and say "Oh, that's what happens when folks break the law." This message will happen in all the British crime shows I watch from Agatha Raisin through Wallander because that is the reality I have chosen. 

Rarely does life come so neatly packaged as a television show; rarely do we encounter evil being dealt such decisive blows inside a ninety-minute segment. That doesn't mean it's not possible. Just ask Vera.