The Tunnel

I’m feeling at loose ends right now.

Last Sunday night I watched the final episode of The Tunnel on PBS. It was a 10-part crime drama about a murder victim – two victims, actually – found in the middle of the tunnel between England and France.

I was intrigued by Else and Karl, the two detectives who worked together to solve the mystery. So tonight I’m feeling a little sad that I have no TV show to look forward to.

Wikipedia tells me that a second series has already been made, and I’m sure many viewers will want to see Else and Karl again. But I won’t be tuning in even though I usually enjoy crime dramas. (I thought the Prime Suspect series with Helen Mirren was the best TV I’ve ever seen.)

I had two problems with The Tunnel. One was that I missed a lot of the dialogue. The show aired at 10:30 PM, too late for me to turn the TV volume way up. (We live in a fourth-floor condo). Making matters worse, I couldn’t get the caption feature on the TV to work. Couldn’t the director have insisted that the characters speak clearly?

The second problem was too many characters.  Ye gods and little fishes – new characters came (and went, often via the morgue) every week. I couldn’t keep them all straight. I started rereading the episode summaries on Wikipedia every Sunday night just before the latest episode aired.

OK, maybe I’m not the ideal viewer for a series like this. But my husband and I watched all the Prime Suspect episodes (twice!) without the benefit of captions or a Wikipedia summary – and we had no trouble following the plots.

Here’s something you may remember my mentioning recently: Walt Disney is supposed to have insisted on making the drawings for his animated features so vivid that children could follow the story without words. That strikes me as a worthy goal for TV as well.

Since writers don’t have the luxury of explanatory pictures, we have to achieve the same clarity through words. Not easy – but I have two suggestions. (Warning: They’re not the typical advice about plot, character development, and so on.)

  1.  Have someone else read and comment on what you’ve written. Take that feedback seriously. If you’re anything like me, you’re going to want to defend what you’ve written. Resist that temptation. Your attitude has to be that if even one person misses the point of what you’re trying to say, it’s time to revise.
  2. Watch your reactions as you read. When you’re caught up in something you enjoy, take it apart to see how the author did it. When something isn’t working for you, figure out what’s wrong and what’s missing.

Breaking news: My husband (who’s been watching me mope around) just suggested that we watch a rerun of Death in Paradise (another PBS crime series with a lighter touch).  Since it’s a series I already know well, maybe I can focus some of my attention on figuring out how the production company has been able to keep the series going strong for five seasons. Something to think about!

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