common mystery trope that bugs me

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by hobnail

No, you didn't; I didn't mean to imply that you did. I was just ranting because I have friends who insist it's all a big plot (the media) to brainwash us.

Maybe you need a better breed of friend?


Peace.

[JSWolf]

A show that's still current that I like is Vera. It's not your typical 45 minute mystery. It's about 1.5 hours.

[Catlady]

The problem isn't with the mystery tropes, it's with the execution. Information dumps once the villain of the piece is revealed tell me that the author did a lousy job.

One annoying thing that I'm seeing more often lately is two disconnected villains, in domestic suspense especially. Two people both have a grudge against someone, and the reader is led to eliminate both as the villain because neither can be responsible for all the dastardly doings.

[BookCat]

The crucial factor is that the reader has all the clues to be able to work out whodunnit, even though they may not put them together to work this out.

Clues presented when the detective has gathered all the suspects and pronouncing who did it and how, should have been available to the reader at some point in the book.

For example, it was possible to work out that in one particular Agatha Christie book, they ALL did it!

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by BookCat

The crucial factor is that the reader has all the clues to be able to work out whodunnit, even though they may not put them together to work this out.

Clues presented when the detective has gathered all the suspects and pronouncing who did it and how, should have been available to the reader at some point in the book.

For example, it was possible to work out that in one particular Agatha Christie book, they ALL did it!

I won't give away which book, but I know which book it is and it's a good one.

[Apache]

Originally Posted by BookCat

The crucial factor is that the reader has all the clues to be able to work out whodunnit, even though they may not put them together to work this out.

Clues presented when the detective has gathered all the suspects and pronouncing who did it and how, should have been available to the reader at some point in the book.

For example, it was possible to work out that in one particular Agatha Christie book, they ALL did it!

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I won't give away which book, but I know which book it is and it's a good one.

I agree. It's a classic.
Apache

[Luffy]

My 2 cents is that I've rarely read mysteries as bad as those mentioned in the initial posts.

Take the cozies of Daryl Wood Gerber. Her amateur sleuth constantly tries to guess whodunit. The books are from the first person perspective. We get to accompany her thoughts right until she discovers the truth. I do recommend this book series.

[pdurrant]

A good rule of thumb for TV murder mysteries is that the most well-known guest actor is the murderer.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

A good rule of thumb for TV murder mysteries is that the most well-known guest actor is the murderer.

Unless the show is on the CW.
They rarely cast established guests.
(Nancy Drew, Riverdale, etc.)
Doesn't mean they're bad actors. Just available cheap.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

A good rule of thumb for TV murder mysteries is that the most well-known guest actor is the murderer.

That, to me, is the worst of late. it's bloody impossible NOT to know who it is, within the first five minutes. I wish that they'd decide to use unknowns for all guest roles, for this reason. It doesn't seem to matter if it's network or something like Silent Witness (not network here in the US, but certainly it is in the UK); it's always just dead bloody obvious and very frustrating.

It's equally frustrating in tepidly-done mystery novels, but TV is such a wasteland of decent programming to begin with, the "guest star dunnit" thing is just one more problem.

Hitch

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Hitch

It's equally frustrating in tepidly-done mystery novels, but TV is such a wasteland of decent programming to begin with, ...

I’m going OT, but I see this a lot and I just don’t get it. I don’t watch television, but if I did watch television, I wouldn’t watch television anyway if I thought it the “vast wasteland” of Newton Minow’s famous speech, if that makes sense.

I don’t watch television because I don’t like television. I don’t like the noise or the light and I’d rather read anyway. But if I wanted to watch television, this seems likes a golden age to me with tons of quality choices. Maybe not for hours every single evening, but for a few shows per week? I’d have a hard time narrowing it down.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by issybird

I’m going OT, but I see this a lot and I just don’t get it. I don’t watch television, but if I did watch television, I wouldn’t watch television anyway if I thought it the “vast wasteland” of Newton Minow’s famous speech, if that makes sense.

I don’t watch television because I don’t like television. I don’t like the noise or the light and I’d rather read anyway. But if I wanted to watch television, this seems likes a golden age to me with tons of quality choices. Maybe not for hours every single evening, but for a few shows per week? I’d have a hard time narrowing it down.

Well...we've tried about 10 different streaming services, from the ubiquitous Netflix to Acorn when it was new, BritBox, Hulu, and a handful of lesser-knowns. And of course, the usual satellite/cable channels.

I think I may have mentioned before that my spouse has quite severe tinnitus, and he can't tolerate silence, despite the fact that it's my favorite thing. He needs noise to block out as much of the tinnitus as he can. The compromise is music or TV. (Yes, before anyone says it, we've tried white noise machines, aids, yadda...)

So, we definitely have the TV on more than I'd like. I try to make it less annoying by working at finding stuff that isn't horrible.

I am not a fan of reality stuff, which eliminates a lot of the current network and primary cable channel offerings, whether it's 8th-grade popularity stuff like Survivor or Big Brother or those sort of things, or alternate stuff like what you see on A&E or the like. Or Discovery stuff like "ice road truckers." (I think that's where that is.)

We don't care for comedies. So...mysteries are pretty much it, mysteries, some police procedurals and the like. My criteria, in this day and age, is reduced to "not stupid and not vapid." {shrug}. Or at least, "I don't know who the killer is, inside the first 5 minutes." (That one is harder to achieve than one would hope; plots are endlessly recycled.)

I keep looking for new-to-us stuff; Aussie mysteries or shows, NZ, anything British that we haven't seen, and anything with adequate, competent closed-captioning that we can read. Things like Harrow are pretty rote, but at least the quality of the acting isn't unwatchably bad and at least we haven't seen them previously. Oh, well.

Everyone's taste is different. I mean, shows that I would not watch--they're simply not my cuppa, like Friends or Seinfeld--were wildly popular, so...obviously, what I like isn't so popular.

So, back to the topic at hand--yup, Tropes and clichés abound, whether in novels or TV.

Hitch

[Luffy]

Just because Breaking Bad and GOT occurred doesn't mean that we are in a Golden Age. Like knowledge, the number of TV executives doubles every 5 years. And they are taking the fun out of many shows. Yet people are on board. But it's not the apex of television. Not until creative control is well managed and the music scores are not pruned into blandness. And the cinematography isn't aping dark movies.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by issybird

I’m going OT, but I see this a lot and I just don’t get it. I don’t watch television, but if I did watch television, I wouldn’t watch television anyway if I thought it the “vast wasteland” of Newton Minow’s famous speech, if that makes sense.

I don’t watch television because I don’t like television. I don’t like the noise or the light and I’d rather read anyway. But if I wanted to watch television, this seems likes a golden age to me with tons of quality choices. Maybe not for hours every single evening, but for a few shows per week? I’d have a hard time narrowing it down.

It's not quite off-topic since TV is going to way of book publishing in one very neglected way: fragmentation. And the newer shows are becoming increasingly faithful to the source material because of the freedom from having to appeal to everybody everywhere. The new paradigm isn't about volume viewership as much as delighting the right niche.

It used to be that TV was lowest-common denominator programing because the number of distribution channels was limited and the dominant revenue was ad sales, which demanded huge numbers. So, while TV was never a true wasteland, those with specific tastes and expectations had tobe on the lookout for the few programs that came close to matching their taste, for as long as they might last.

That ended, to an extent, with pay cable and niche cable originals. A tge same time, broadcast programmers discovered (with St. Elsewhere, Hill Street Blues, STNG, and BUFFY, among others) that viewers weren't quite as...low attention span...as previously assumed and programing became more sequential, often serialized, and more sophisticated.

By now, though, with the dawning of narrowcasting and streaming, TV programing has evolved into a collection of niche series, ranging from fun mindcandy to challenging and sophisticated video novels. There truly is something for everybody.

However... The old paradigm of turning on the TV to see what's playing no longer works. To truly exploit the world of streaming you have to know exactly what you're looking for, very much like going into an online ebookstore.

Pick a genre, do a bit of sampling, and you'll find true jewels in many genres and from many sources. And what is available is stuff unthinkable just a decade ago. Korean or Australians soaps? Check. Cult clasics like THE PRISONER or THE AVENGERS? Yes.

Mysteries like Agatha Christie's ABC MURDERS (John Malkovic as an aging Poirot who's no longer viewed as a superstar detective), book series adaptations like BOSCH or LONGMIRE, or cat and mouse crime dramas like KILLING EVE or THE BRIDGE (both the original and the remake). Science Fiction and fantasies all over; things like ALTERED CARBON, WATCHMEN, (remade and ridiculously improved) LOST IN SPACE, WITCHER, THE BOYS, etc.
All available at the viewer's convenience: day or night, one at a time or in a binge. Usually without commercials and cheaper than paying for 500 channels you don't watch.

It is truly a golden age of video entertainment but it requires more engagement than just turning on the TV and hoping something watchable is sent out by the three (only) networks. Just as ebooks provide an eternal backlist, the new streaming services are evolving into decades-deep archives accumulating everything that ever ran alongside all-new genre specific series. Much like with books, the consumer is now king and creators are much freer to tell their stories their way.

We're almost where the old QWEST commercials promised in 1999.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAxt...&persist_app=1

So yes, Golden Age is exactly right.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Luffy

Just because Breaking Bad and GOT occurred doesn't mean that we are in a Golden Age. Like knowledge, the number of TV executives doubles every 5 years. And they are taking the fun out of many shows. Yet people are on board. But it's not the apex of television. Not until creative control is well managed and the music scores are not pruned into blandness. And the cinematography isn't aping dark movies.

If BREAKING BAD and GOT are your idea of what today's video world is like you're probably not a cordcutter.

The poster children for today's video world are things like DOOM PATROL, CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRINA, THE MANDALORIAN, the upcoming MARVEL and DC streaming series, even the Apple TV shows nobody is watching. They have movie producers and stars and theatrical class budgets in the $10-20M per episode range. Essentially they are 4-8 hour movies. Some run 12-15.

PRIME is preparing a LORD OF THE RINGS prequel series: they paid a billion for the riggts and are budgetting another billion for three seasons or so. WARNERMEDIA is doing a DUNE SERIES. NETFLIX and PRIME are winning Oscars, Emmys, and Golden Globes for the movies and series they create for their streaming services.

The producers are experienced movie personnel, not network types working with CW budgets, with deep CGI funding (if required) and free of the video versions of page count tyranny. If tge story needs seven episodes, they do seven. If ten, ten. And they don't start publishing until the full season is done. If it takes 18 months, then 18 months it is.

The reason for the new paradigm is these new shows are meant to be available forever. Miss it this year? Just like ebooks, it'll be forever "in print" generating views and income indefinitely.

It is nothing like it was ten years ago and it isn't done changing.
Today's video streaming world is essentially ebooks circa 2011. Adoption is just getting mainstreamed and the old guard, cablecos and cable networks are starting to panic. Disney, for one, is cannibalizing their cable channels in favor of their fledgling stream service because people are dropping cable by the million each quarter. Even the NBA is hurting and admitting it.

https://www.nydailynews.com/sports/b...gk4-story.html

But Silver isn’t pinning all of the blame on injuries alone — the ratings decline is also a byproduct of second-hand streaming services.

“There are then some structural issues in the way our games are delivered, and it's something that we're working through with our media partners now,” he said. “For example, it's well-known that on one hand we're celebrated by some because we have such a young fan base, but that young fan base is disconnecting from pay television in record numbers, and by disconnecting, not just simply not subscribing to cable or so-called cutting the cord, they're not watching traditional paid television the way they used to. They're watching over-the-top streaming services. They're watching screens, but it's not essentially pay TV.

Disruption all over.