So then. Red faces at Midsomer Murders. Which at least provides a bit of diversity among all the white ones. Producer Brian True-May's ill-judged comments about it representing "the last bastion of Englishness" have caused a predictable storm and counter-storm, with one side crying racism and the other crying about the cries of racism.
But is the overwhelming whiteness representative of the English countryside? Well, I grew up in south Oxfordshire, very close to some of the locations used in Midsomer Murders, specifically near a town called Wallingford, which used to double as "Causton" in the series. It's also – fittingly – where Agatha Christie died. Oh, and it used to regularly show up in the Ronnie Corbett sitcom Sorry, if you're interested. Which I sense you aren't.
To the best of my knowledge, when I was growing up, there was one black kid in my village, several black and brown kids at my school, and a Chinese family running the local takeaway. This was back in the late 70s and 80s. Not exactly the United Nations, but still: to actively pursue a policy of white-only casting would be unrealistic.
It's interesting that Midsomer Murders managed to chug along for 16 years without anyone really bothering to question its Caucasian hue. That's partly because although it notionally takes place in the present day, everyone watching it implicitly understands that it's actually set in an anachronistic bubble – a strange unofficial cross between 1991 and 1946. I'm surprised the characters don't drive steam trains to get to the shops. In this environment, anything even vaguely contemporary looks out of place: if someone turned up wearing a digital watch, the villagers would probably mistake them for a warlock and beat them to death with cudgels.
Midsomer's lack of ethnic diversity stems from the fact that it's essentially a camp tribute to "Murder at the Vicarage" potboilers from a pre-multicultural era: a knowing assembly of Middle England cliches. The show is hardly a slave to realism. One of its murder victims was pinned with hoops to a croquet lawn and killed with a vintage bottle of claret fired from a Roman catapult. Complaining about a lack of authenticity in those circumstances seems daft. On the other hand, since it's about as realistic as a butterscotch harpoon anyway, why do the makers seem to assume the addition of a few brown faces might jolt the audience out of their suspension of disbelief? The viewers aren't that stupid, or anywhere near that prejudiced. And the ones that are will be too busy designing racist pamphlets or ranting on the internet to tune in anyway.
Putting aside the legality of a major commercial venture apparently enacting an employment policy that excludes people on the basis of skin colour for no good reason, many have complained that to suddenly introduce "ethnic" characters would be "PC gone mad". Yes it would, if they introduced them solely to do a storyline about grime MCs or arranged marriages, or showed them walking around the village shaking hands with all the white folk. But no one's asking for that. You don't even have to change the writing. Just widen the audition process. It won't hurt. It can only help.
When I was a kiddywink, back in that almost entirely white Midsomer-style village, many of my views about people from different ethnic backgrounds were defined by what I saw on television. There were a few black and brown characters in shows such as Grange Hill. There was Trevor McDonald, Lenny Henry, Huggy Bear from Starsky and Hutch, and assorted musicians on Top of the Pops. Black people were often used as a sort of lazy shorthand for "cool". Consequently, I formed a spectacularly patronising general view that all black people were inherently "cool". It wasn't until I moved to London and suddenly met lots of them in real life that I realised many were massive dorks. And that wasn't the only way they failed to live up to the televised stereotype: I can still recall my feeble shock at meeting a black girl who preferred indie rock to hip-hop.
But still: gauche though I may have been, at least I wasn't fearful or mistrusting. I had an inherent (albeit incredibly condescending) sense that I liked black people, and wanted them to like me. And I genuinely believe a lot of that was thanks to Derek Griffiths. Griffiths was the first black person I can remember encountering anywhere in my life, and he existed only on my television. He presented Play School, appeared in Play Away, and created the music for Bod. And as far as I'm concerned he's one of the most brilliant TV presenters this country has ever produced: instantly warm and likeable, clearly very talented, and possessing the rare knack of appearing to speak directly to young viewers without patronising them. His colour absolutely didn't matter, yet at the same time it did – precisely because it didn't matter. Even this four year old could see that.
Children's TV has long been ahead of adult TV in terms of diversity – witness Cerrie Burnell, the one-armed CBBC presenter, whose very presence on our screens is right now teaching millions of kids not to be wary of disabled people. They know a disabled person now, and they like her, and that unusual arm is unimportant in the way they see her, but profound in the way they see the world. Again: widening that audition process won't hurt. It can only help.
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