During the pandemic one of my "This is what I will do to distract myself from our impending doom" rituals was to watch an episode of a British detective show every night. I started with INSPECTOR MORSE, then went to its sequel LEWIS, then its very modern (and fabulous) prequel ENDEAVOUR, then GEORGE GENTLY, PRIME SUSPECT, MORSE again and finally FOYLE'S WAR.
What can I say? It was a long pandemic.
The other night I stumbled onto another one of these kinds of shows, A TOUCH OF FROST, which like many of these is a 90s-00s show that somehow fronts like 1975. It's about an eccentric middle aged detective (they're almost all eccentric middle aged detectives) solving cases in a small town while dealing with the loss of his wife (most of them have some kind of sad backstory eventually if not at first).
It's not the kind of show I'd expect most screenwriters today to be poring over for ideas about writing. And yet, watching the second episode tonight I was hit by a very small and very clever move it made. On a detective show, so much of the story is just talking heads in an interrogation room, or someone's house/business, or in the detectives' office. And that can work just fine; LINE OF DUTY has made it a signature, in fact, to do interrogations that can go longer than 20 minutes, and still keep you captivated. And frankly a lot of these older detective shows just aren't that interested in being creative about things like setting.
But about halfway through the ep, Frost and some of the other guys in the station hide out in his office eating curries. And the only light is the orange glow from the heating unit on their faces. It's been established over the course of the episode a) that the heat is out in the station; b) that there's consequently no food in the mess hall--and that that is a good thing; and c) their boss is an absolute prat.
All of that is fun information in and of itself, ways to specify the world in which this story is happening. And this moment with the four guys eating curries and sharing information is the big payoff. The story here is ordinary, just a Debating Villains moment. But presented in this way both visually and with the broader context of We Have to Hide from Our Boss, it just comes alive. It's like we're watching a bunch of grown men playact being kids around a campfire in their backyard.
One lesson in this moment is the value of Hiding your exposition within conflict. Even a tiny, ridiculous conflict like the threat of their boss is enough to keep us from feeling like the story has stopped to download us with information.
But the bigger idea, I think, is a question that is worth asking when putting together more ordinary scenes: What's the most interesting place to set this scene?
You've got to do talking heads? Fine. What's the most unusual or interesting place that can happen? What's the place we're not expecting, or that adds another layer of story or business to the proceedings?
The thing I really love about this episode of FROST is, it applies that question not just to that one scene but to the whole episode. How do we make all the talking heads work interesting? I got it, let's have the place be freezing.
I realize, ancient (oh so male) British detective shows may not seem like they're for everyone. But I delight in the fact that they still have things to teach. That's really the premise of this blog; it doesn't matter what you're watching, you can learn from it.
So this week I'm going to look back through my notes on these old British shows and draw out some other fundamental writing ideas for us to chew on.
Cheers!
