Goddamn race equality think tanks, rolling through the pleasant valleys of middle England and firing their filthy foreign shells into our all-white villages:
It is a picture-postcard county blighted only by an unusually high number of grisly murders. But now the fictional shire of Midsomer is at the centre of a race row after the creator of detective drama Midsomer Murders claimed part of the show’s appeal was its all-white cast.
Producer Brian True-May said the location “wouldn’t work” if there was any racial diversity depicted in what he described as “the last bastion of Englishness” in the Midsomer villages.
His comments sparked anger from the director of the UK’s leading race equality think tank, the Runnymede Trust, who branded his views unfair and exclusionary.
“Maybe I’m not politically correct,” Mr True-May told the Radio Times. “We just don’t have ethnic minorities involved. It wouldn’t be the English village with them. It just wouldn’t work.”
He added: “Suddenly we might be in Slough. Ironically, Causton [a town in the show] is supposed to be Slough. And if you went into Slough you wouldn’t see a white face there. We’re the last bastion of Englishness and I want to keep it that way.”
Rob Berkeley, director of the Runnymede Trust, said that Mr True-May’s comments risked turning off viewers with ethnic minority backgrounds.
He said: “Clearly, as a fictional work, the producers of Midsomer Murders are entitled to their flights of fancy, but to claim that the English village is purely white is no longer true and not a fair reflection of our society, particularly to this show’s large international audience.
“It is not a major surprise that ethnic minority people choose not to watch a show that excludes them.”
Mr True-May, the programme’s co-creator, was asked in the interview why “Englishness” could not include other races. He said: “Well, it should do, and maybe I’m not politically correct.
“I’m trying to make something that appeals to a certain audience, which seems to succeed. And I don’t want to change it.”
Mr True-May said he had not previously been tackled about the programme’s failure to reflect “cosmopolitan” society.
He said: “It’s not British, it’s very English. We are a cosmopolitan society in this country, but if you watch Midsomer you wouldn’t think so. I’ve never been picked up on that, but quite honestly I wouldn’t want to change it.”
The producer has also banned swearing, violence and sex scenes from the show. But his idyllic formula does not stop challenging storylines, or other elements of diversity which do not involve ethnicity. “If it’s incest, blackmail, lesbianism, homosexuality...terrific, put it in, because people can believe that people can murder for any of those reasons,” he told the Radio Times.
The latest series, on ITV1 next week, has a new star, Neil Dudgeon, as central character DCI John Barnaby.
He replaces actor John Nettles (his cousin DCI Tom Barnaby) whose wife and daughter were played by Jane Wymark and Laura Howard. Midsomer Murders, based on the books by Caroline Graham, was launched in 1997 and has featured 222 murders.
The show is broadcast to 231 territories worldwide. A 2006 study found it to be “strikingly unpopular” with ethnic minorities.
The full interview is in the latest edition of Radio Times, which is on sale today.
― James Mitchell, Tuesday, 15 March 2011 10:05 (fifteen years ago)