Box of tricks – Alison Healy on television clichés

Thanks to a dramatic increase in television-watching over the past year, I have come to an important conclusion. Those fictional families on our screens are utterly clueless. First of all, they waste a sinful amount of breakfast ingredients. Picture the scene. Children and father rush into the kitchen where the mother – it’s always the mother – has prepared a breakfast banquet capable of feeding 40 people. Oranges have been juiced. Pancakes have been made. Eggs have been scrambled. There might even be a tablecloth. You know what happens next. The ungrateful wretches grab a triangle of toast each and run out the door, schoolbags flapping.

It’s almost as irritating as watching a family sitting down at a dinner table groaning with food, only for everyone to take umbrage at something and storm off, even before that giant dome of mashed potato has been passed around.

Would someone please think of the viewers? We were looking forward to this dinner. Don’t cut it short. And riddle me this. When they sit down, their plates are full of food, yet the serving dishes are also overflowing. What sort of sorcery is at play here and where can you get those magical dishes?

If you are a couple in a television show, then it’s mandatory to be gearing up for a row when guests visit your home. Then you must say to your warring partner, with just a hint of steel in your voice: “Can I see you in the kitchen, darling?”

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When you go into the kitchen, you must immediately forget about being discreet and instead launch into a loud and flaming row that can be heard three houses away, even though your guests are on the other side of the door. If the row continues, you have no choice but to get a pillow and a blanket and sleep on the sofa.

Yes, you may live in an enormous, sprawling American mansion but, thanks to an oversight by your useless architect, you don’t have one spare bed in the house.

It’s a miracle anyone in a television show ever goes on a date, due to their pathetic organisational skills. Someone asks a complete stranger if they can take them out to dinner and they don’t mention a time, or a restaurant, or even exchange numbers. Is there only one restaurant in New York for television characters and does it only have one sitting a night? That would explain how they always seem to turn up in the right place at the right time.

But wouldn’t it be nice to live in a television show? You always get parking right outside where you need to go. You usually don’t bother to lock your car or close your windows and you never have to fumble for coins to feed the meter. And when you go into a bar, you don’t have to spend 15 minutes trying to catch the bar person’s eye while gradually but insistently edging your way towards the counter while your face is squashed into somebody’s back. Instead, as you approach the bar, the crowds melt away and a seat offers itself to you. And despite the thumping music, you can hear the person beside you perfectly, without having to say “Wha?” 10 times.

One of the downsides of living in a television programme is that you often find yourself working late in a massive office. But rather than leave the lights on like a sensible person, you prefer to work by the light of a small desk lamp.

You don’t care if the night cleaners cannot see where they are going. You are about to crack a huge case while eating takeaway food with chopsticks and that’s all that matters. But a word of warning here. If a cleaner is using one of those big polishing machines in a long corridor at night, then it’s highly likely someone will be murdered before the end of the show.

And if it’s you, don’t expect the cleaners to come to your aid, due to your rudeness in forcing them to work in the dark.

Which finally brings us to the shocking telephone etiquette on display in crime shows. No one says hello when they make a call. Instead, they start waffling about DNA results or the dead body in the lake. These television characters are clearly written by people without a drop of Irish blood. They don’t know that it’s only good manners to engage in a circular conversation asking about each other’s wellbeing for at least five minutes before getting to the point of any phone call.

Not only do they not say hello, but they also end the call abruptly without saying goodbye. If you tried that in Ireland, the person on the other end would probably ring you back, assuming you had been cut off. We'll know when a new crime show is written by an Irish person because the characters will say goodbye in at least three different ways before they hang up – mind yourself, I'll let you go, good luck, I'll see you so. And they will then follow this with "bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye".

Anything less would just be rude.