Friday, April 11, 2003

Comment about Episode #1 of ExxonMobil Masterpiece's "The Jury"

I looked forward to this show, thinking, aha!, here, finally is a show that will tell us how jurors really talk and and deliberate about evidence; those people in the U.K., I thought, -- those sophisticated people in the U.K., unlike the buffoons in the good old U.S. of A., will get it right, I thought.

Ach weh! Disappointment!

Judging by episode #1: the show was produced by waugh-wannabees who, along the way, throw in some progressive social commentary & plot development, presumably to soften the impact of their acid view of human nature -- and, I imagine, to assure funding from non-profits to produce the series.

Perhaps worse yet, along the way, the producers of the show (probably unwittingly) manage to reproduce almost every imaginable class, cultural, and racial stereotype. In mitigation: the stereotypes in the show are those that, presumably, U.K. progressives hold, but, for all that, the stereotypes in the show are stereotypes.

So you see: I too can be a waugh-wannabee!

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