Being German and having enjoyed quite a few British TV shows over the years, I have discovered a huge difference between the British programmes and their German counterparts: if you are a principal character in a UK show you are more likely to get killed. We Germans like our stars, so we nurture them; it’s very rare that they see their mortal demise and if they do it’s advertised months before, so we can agonise about it.
I got the first shock years ago whilst watching „Cracker“. Christopher Eccleston’s inspector bled to death. I couldn’t believe what I saw. He was the inspector, one of the main characters besides Robbie Coltrane’s cynical psychiatrist Fitz! And he died. Just like that. I am not saying that this was a major blow for the show; it was very good for the development of the other characters. I am just saying that you don’t kill popular policemen on German telly. Eccleston’s inspector wasn’t the last. You just have to watch „Spooks“ to know that you shouldn’t get too attached to a character – he or she will face a horrible death, that’s certain. Or take „Torchwood“ – most of the supporting cast around Jack Barrowman’s Captain Jack Harkness are dead after three seasons. No one saw this coming.
I think writers like Russell T Davies, David Wolstencroft or Jimmy McGovern like to kill off their heroes to give the rest of the cast something to chew on, and to throw the fans of the show into limbo. The agonising about Torchwood’s Ianto or Wolstencroft’s last victim Ros Myers kept several internet forums occupied for weeks. Not to mention that awful death of Spooks character Helen Flynn in a deep fat fryer. You wouldn’t find that on German television. Here people just retire, move to another country. I can’t exactly be sure about soaps, because I don’t watch them and I know that death happens in that genre. No, I am talking purely about thrillers and I can only remember one inspector who got shot – Siegfried Lowitz, after a hundred episodes. It caused an uproar and since then German writers have found another exit for actors who want to quit the show.
Here is my theory: Germans need their fictional authority figures alive. They might be flawed, but they need to be kept breathing, otherwise the bad boys would win. So you could say that the British writers are more fearless in what they present their audiences with. I don’t know, but could I please request that in the last series of „Spooks“ not one of the good guys gets blown up or shot, just for a change. It would ease my mind enormously.