Whitewash?

So, Midsomer Murders is under critical scrutiny for repeatedly featuring an all-white cast. I've long noticed that but didn't think much of it - after all, the quaint English villages in which it's set, all within close proximity of me here, are hardly hotbeds of racial and ethnic diversity. (Though of course, as has been pointed out, to defend the make-up of the cast with reference to realism is to ignore the way the programme repeatedly flouts realism in many other respects - not least the improbably high number of homicides...)

It's that age-old question: should art reflect/represent reality, or should it deviate from it in the hope of bringing change to bear upon reality? Much as I might be in favour of the latter approach at times, it's difficult to see how including a tokenistic handful of black and/or Asian characters in Midsomer Murders could help to effect meaningful social change, despite what the likes of Judy Ling Wong of Black Environment Network might claim.

What were more distasteful than matter-of-fact were the show's producer Brian True-May's comments, for which he's been suspended by ITV: "I'm trying to make something that appeals to a certain audience, which seems to succeed. And I don't want to change it." Presumably that "certain audience", by implication, doesn't like to see black faces on TV? I've suspected for some time that the programme was cynically targeted at asylum-seeker-hating, Daily-Heil-reading multiculturophobes, but to find myself definitely lumped in with their number is rather disconcerting.