Thursday 9 September 2010

Things that make me go hmmm – on TV (Part 2)


So, as I have demonstrated, women are frequently portrayed as raging hormonal timebombs with no sense of hygiene. This, in itself, would be bad enough, but the wily TV execs have yet more fiendish tricks up their sleeve. In a further attempt to make them all seem what Irvine Welsh would term “silly wee girlies” they have determined to carry on the old Marilyn Monroe-esque tradition of the tiny, powerless bint in her boyfriend's massive shirt.

The Tiny, Powerless Bint in her Boyfriend's Massive Shirt
Like the madwoman with the pregnancy test, this scene knows no genre and is just as likely to turn up in the corniest sit-com as it is in a tense drama.

Cynics might claim that this aversion is due to the unlikelihood of my ever being able to fit into any of my ex-boyfriend's shirts – even with straining seams and unsightly bulges - and I must confess that, unless I suddenly recall dating Giant Haystacks during a previously undiscovered amnesiac period in the 1980s, this is indeed true. Yet nothing is guaranteed to send me screaming up the wall faster and louder than the scene where, clearly after a night of coruscating passion, the woman is seen wandering winsomely around her apartment dressed in her boyfriend's shirt.

Apart from the hygiene issues of choosing to wear the same clothing that the sweaty herbert thought fit only for the bedroom floor last night, there is almost always a disconnection of logic. For example, this very scene was reprised by the extremely curvy Letitia Dean playing Sharon Watts in Eastenders when she was engaged in a particularly insane sexual affair with Dennis, played by the rather skinny and not especially towering Nigel Harman. There is no way – I repeat no way – that Letitia Dean would fit into a shirt of Nigel Harman's but, when she opened the door clad in that very item it was so capacious you practically could have fitted another Letitia Dean in beside her. Unless dear old Dennis was moonlighting as the Incredible Hulk and extending his wardrobe to equip both of his guises, I would humbly suggest that this was a risibly unlikely scenario.

It's almost enough to make me want to work in TV. If so, I would write a drama of a smouldering affair between an older, golf-obsessed businessman (played by Ronnie Corbett) and a middle-aged TV executive (played by the Amazonian Julie T. Wallace). Then when, after the obligatory night spent ceiling-gazing, she could answer the door wearing his shirt, that reaches way beneath her knees and THEY MIGHT GET THE BLOODY MESSAGE!

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