As time goes on, approaching age 76, I am less active and watching more TV, at least from 5PM on. To qualify, I never watch news or any sports except the Denver Broncos, and for that I can offer no rational explanation. Of course the NFL is rigged for the other 31 teams, but not the Broncos! I do like detective fiction more than any other genre. It offers a kind of cleanliness that I don’t find anywhere else, that is, they only focus on problem solving. If they want to throw in propaganda for the hoi palloi, I am gone. I lose WSOD, or willing suspension of disbelief.
For instance, and this is not detective fiction, but I did watch episode 1 of The Pitt. In it they had a flashback scene in which Dr. Michael Robinavitch, played by Noah Wyle, was was in a room filled withs stretchers, maybe fifty people dying of Covid despite doctors’ attempts to save them. This ran head on against my experience from 2020 when independent-minded people all over the country were going to hospital emergency rooms, getting as close as they could, only to find … crickets. There might have been card games or wheel chair races, but there were no patients. It was all a TV show, ala Wag the Dog.
This is how propaganda becomes “reality”, via television fiction. The Covid-19 plague was fake, but over time it is inserted into our day-to-day TV experiences, and soon enough will become that reality. (Already has!) Thus in TV and movies do we have heroes rescuing victims of 911, from cops to paramedics and rescue personnel to fire fighters. They are all fake. Further, they are also doing false grave sites for victims. We were at Babylon Rural Cemetery on Long Island a couple of years ago, and came across this headstone, easily seen to be fake. If not, why are not beloved spouse, children, parents, siblings and friends not keeping up the grave? Why is it stuck in a far corner of the cemetery, right up against the fence, and allowed to go to seed?
This is not even what I sat down to write about. Dammit! It’s as if I am watching my fingers have their own party on the keyboard.
I have been watching a couple of television series, and after then discovering that they are considered “film noire”. They are gripping, suspenseful, well acted and written. The two I’ve watched are British and Scottish. The film noire genre came out of the 1940s and 50s, and I’ve never been sure of what it is, really. “Noire” is the French word for “black.” It is generally, as I now see looking back, suspenseful movies about cops or detectives, moody and with subtly gray or dark lighting. But moving into the current era of in-home movie-quality television, the darkness has to come from more than just lighting, and so most of it must be delivered by the characters and script.
In Broadchurch, a British TV series that lasted three seasons from 2013-17, an eleven-year old boy is killed, found on a beach, and it is left for for two cops, played by David Tennant and Olivia Colman, to solve the case. (Note photo to right, and how dark it is! I just now noticed that.) It takes ten episodes, a challenge of our era, as everything has to be stretched out. So bits and piece of crimesolve are introduced at intervals, most of them false leads. The acting and writing are superb, and I have now watched all three seasons. There are no truly “happy endings” for any of the cast. They have to accept death of a loved one and move forward, and all have their own problems too. It is harder to move on for some, as with the father of the victim, who is still in psychic pain in season three.
Department Q is another, this one Scottish, and for that reason, I love the accents and humor. For instance, DCI Moira Jacobson (Kate Dickie) tells a detective she has something new for him to look into. He says “A case?” “No!” she snaps. “My hemorrhoids. Of course a case!” Here the lead detective Carl Morck is played by Mathew Goode (pictured left, and again, notice the lighting!). He was shot through the neck on the job, has survivor’s guilt and is angry and annoys the hell out of everyone. So, he is sent to the basement to run his own cold case show, since he apparently cannot be fired. He is assisted as time goes on by Akram Salim, played as a Syrian immigrant by Alexej Manvelov, and DC Rose Dickson (Leah Byrne). Both are excellent, Akram especially adding a sane offset to Morck. He’s an enigma, no one really knowing what he did in Syria, but busting forth with kindness, insight, and physical skills on occasion as needed, surprising everyone.
As part of the cast, there was an actor whose face I recognized, and you surely know how that works. Where have I seen her before? Her name is Kelly MacDonald, and she played Carla Jean Moss in No Country for Old Men. I vaguely remember reading that they had used a Scottish actress for that part. She had to speak American, and did a fine job.
Since this show (10 episodes, of course) came out just last year (2025), maybe I should not spoil the plot other than to say an attorney disappears, is gone for four years and hence qualifies as a cold case, and we viewers are told from the beginning where she is and why no one can find her. The detectives only so very slowly find their way to her. The rest I will discuss in the comments and will label them “spoiler alert.”
I was so taken in by these two series that I looked into them, and thereby discovered that they are dark and moody film noire, which is why I got so involved. Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980), the Canadian professor who specialized in describing media, said of TV that it is a “hot” medium in which we fully participate, jumping though the screen and becoming part of the goings-on. I did not realize it until I ended my journey through these two shows that this is what I had done. Even as our television sets are now large (ours 40 inches) and looking more like movie screens (movies are a “cold” non-participatory medium according to McLuhan), it is still TV. It still grabs us and inserts us in the plot.
The above two series are on Netflix. I looked around for other television of this quality, and AI suggested the following, about which I know nothing:
- Marcella (British Nordic) (Prime)
- The Fall (Irish, set in Belfast) (Prime)
- Deadwind (Finnish) (Netflix)
- Line of Duty (British) (Prime)
- Mare of Easttown (American) HBO
- The Tunnel (set on border, UK-France) (Prime)
The quality is so high on what’ve I’ve seen, my involvement almost addictive to the point of needing to quit mid each episode), that I don’t ever think I can sit back and watch Rockford Files, as I did last year. My how TV has changed.
Piece of Mindful 