Co-creator suspended over racial remarks.One of the creators of long-running TV hit Midsomer Murders has claimed a key to the show’s appeal is its absence of ethnic minorities.
Producer Brian True-May is defiant about the all-white portrayal of rural life in Britain’s murder capital and said: “Maybe I’m not politically correct.”
He told Radio Times the ITV1 programs – which have run for 14 series – “wouldn’t work” if there was any racial diversity in the village life.
True-May, the program’s co-creator who has been with it since day one, said: “We just don’t have ethnic minorities involved. Because it wouldn’t be the English village with them. It just wouldn’t work.
“Suddenly we might be in Slough. Ironically, Causton (one of the main centres of population in the show) is supposed to be Slough. And if you went into Slough you wouldn’t see a white face there.
“We’re the last bastion of Englishness and I want to keep it that way,” he added.
Asked why “Englishness” could not include other races who are well represented in modern society, he said: “Well, it should do, and maybe I’m not politically correct.
“I’m trying to make something that appeals to a certain audience, which seems to succeed. And I don’t want to change it.”
Midsomer Murders, based on the books by Caroline Graham, was launched in 1997 and has featured 251 deaths, 222 of which were murders.
But True-May said he has not previously been tackled about the program’s failure to reflect “cosmopolitan” society.
“It’s not British, it’s very English. We are a cosmopolitan society in this country, but if you watch Midsomer you wouldn’t think so.
“I’ve never been picked up on that, but quite honestly I wouldn’t want to change it,” he said.
True-May has also banned swearing, violence and sex scenes from the show, but his idyllic formula does not stop challenging storylines, or other elements of diversity which do not involve ethnicity.
“If it’s incest, blackmail, lesbianism, homosexuality … terrific, put it in, because people can believe that people can murder for any of those reasons,” he told Radio Times.
Actor Jason Hughes, who has played the program’s DS Jones, said he had pondered why Midsomer continued to have no ethnic minorities.
“I’ve wondered that myself and I don’t know,” he said.
“This isn’t an urban drama and it isn’t about multiculturalism. That’s not to say that there isn’t a place for multiculturalism in the show. But that’s really not up to me to decide. I don’t think that we would all suddenly go, ‘a black gardener in Midsomer? You can’t have that’. I think we’d all go, ‘great, fantastic’.”
The series returns with a new star, Neil Dudgeon, who has joined the cast as DCI John Barnaby, replacing actor John Nettles (DCI Tom Barnaby) as the central character.
Mirroring the way the program, which is broadcast to 231 territories around the world, avoids portraying racial variation, so ethnic minorities apparently avoid the show. A study in 2006 found to be “strikingly unpopular” with minorities.
* Midsomer Murders airs on ABC1 Sunday nights at 8.30pm