Why I Watch British TV (almost exclusively)

 A friend of mine says he prefers British TV because "they use real people."  By this, he means everyone on the set isn't young and model-gorgeous, like in most American shows.  I agree with him.  I much prefer Brit crime shows to American.

I've studied this recently and have found that the real difference is about women: that older, average looking women are virtually absent from American shows.

Some examples that struck me hard:

Blue Bloods:  At first, I thought this show would be appeal to me.  My spouse loved it, first time around.  The protagonist is a good man, a decent man, who loves his family.  But two episodes in, I realized that all the older women had been banished from the set.  Both the mother AND the grandmother are dead.  So those nice family dinners that appear in each episode have men in an array of ages, but no women over 40, at all.  Just good-looking young women.

I understand the device being used here.  The protagonist can be seen as a good man in our eyes, a decent man, because he is not cheating on his wife.  His wife is dead.  Therefore he can have dalliances with other younger women, and still be seen as heroic.  And the male viewers get their eye candy.

I am so so sick of this banishing of older women from major roles.

Which brings me to the latest Indiana Jones film.  Social media sites for women are raging about this one.  An 80 year old man with a 30-something-year-old co-star?  Not even someone my age, *twenty* years younger than the star will do?

One younger woman said to me:  "Does it help that she's his god-daughter?"  And to her, I said, "You're missing the point.  The point is that it is okay for an elderly man to be on that screen, but no one wants to see a woman over 50, apparently.  Let alone one nearing 60, which is a *full generation* younger than the man!"

Which brings me to British shows.

Way back when, we reveled in Prime Suspect.  Helen Mirren was my hero.  A woman, not young and gorgeous, but absolutely fascinating on screen in a lead police procedural role.  

Then, Vera, which is still running.  Overweight, poorly dressed, over-smart, with a mouth and wit that makes me smile.  Where is the American Vera? 

And now - Annika.  If you haven't seen Annika, you're in for a treat.  Nicola Walker is 53, and doesn't mind looking it.  Don't look to her for top fashion.  As my husband says, she's 'every-woman'.  But what a woman!  

I can name more.  Sister Boniface.  Lucy Lawless in My Life is Murder.  Agatha Raisin.  Miss Marple, for Pete's sake!   

Whenever I say Miss Marple, someone always counters with Jessica Fletcher.  That was decades ago!  Where are the older women leads on American crime shows now?  Where are the real women, who don't wear high heels on a crime scene, and haven't resorted to gravity-defying cleavage?

In this, I think we of the second wave feminist movement failed.  If anything, older women have become more invisible as the decades rolled on.  It has become even more important to be young and sexy now than in those early decades of my youth.

Except in Great Britain, where women of all shapes and ages seem to be appreciated.  I will continue to watch British crime shows.

Melodie Campbell writes Brit-type classic mysteries with Brit-type humour.  (note the u)  The Merry Widow Murders is her latest book.  As seen in Ellery Queen: