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Is it ever OK for TV dramas to be all-white?
2011-03-16 15:08:17
15 March 2011 Last updated at 14:43 Share this page Delicious Digg Facebook reddit StumbleUpon Twitter Email Print Is it ever OK for TV dramas to be all-white? Another day, another murder Continue reading the main story In today's Magazine Does the Queen do fashion? 10 of your Vidal Sassoon cuts How hard do you work? The cult of lawn
The producer of ITV's detective drama Midsomer Murders has said putting characters of ethnic minorities into the show would "not work". So is it OK to have an all-white television drama in modern Britain?
The rural district of Midsomer has a murder rate that surpasses the most troubled inner-city neighbourhoods.
Yet it's the racial make-up of the villages, not the crimes, that are now in the news.
The show's producer Brian True-May has been suspended by ITV after telling the Radio Times why, over the 14 years the drama has been running, all the leading characters have been white.
"We just don't have ethnic minorities involved, because it wouldn't be the English village with them," he said. "It just wouldn't work."
Asked why "Englishness" could not include other races who are well represented in modern society, 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."
Given that much of rural England is predominantly white, is it OK to have a TV drama that has few black or Asian characters?
As long as the programme has that kind of identity, says TV critic Kevin O'Sullivan of the Daily Mirror, it is acceptable.
"There aren't very many black farmers in the country, for example, so it would be fairly ludicrous to take a drama with an English village identity and pack it with black and Asian faces, because that wouldn't accurately reflect the area they're trying to portray."
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