“Remoted” – Day 422 (Wednesday)

Murder show.

Tonight, I finished watching the third season of Hinterland, a crime show set in Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, Wales, (a real place!) that I have been binge-watching for a couple weeks. It has the basic premise of many other crime shows – big city cop has personal crisis and flees to a small town and quieter life, and ends up constantly busy solving crazy, bloody crimes. This was also the idea behind Death in Paradise, which was set on a pretty island in the eastern Caribbean Sea. 

According to the Wikipedia page for Hinterland, “The series reflects the commitment made in April 2013 by the Director of BBC Cymru Wales, Rhodri Talfan Davies, to show more Welsh language, life, and culture on the mainstream BBC channels.” Wales looks lovely and drizzly and moody, and based on the sheer number of violent crimes depicted in the one rural town in this show created to depict Welsh “life and culture,” I don’t think I want to go there. Ever. It is interesting to note that every show was filmed twice – in English and in Welsh. That’s a lot of work for the actors. I wonder if they were paid for the equivalent of two shows.

As for the pretty little island in Death in Paradise, I’m not so keen on that place either. It looks lovely, but everyone there ends up dead by rather unnatural causes, so that’s not going to be on the top of my travel list any time soon. I guess it’s a good thing that show is set on a made-up island.

The crime show switch has been forced by the Hallmark Channel lineup which suddenly transformed to endless episodes of Reba and Last Man Standing and a bunch of other series once the calendar flipped to May. Thanks, Hallmark. Now instead of sappy movies with happy endings that might teach me how to meet a life partner, I’m looking at grim police procedurals and learning all the most gruesome ways to kill people. Not cool.