Watch What You Show Me

With trepidation I set my toe into a murder mystery series called "Vera."  I don't like to see violence, blood, gore, suspenseful threats on the screen.  I am a wuss, however you spell it.  But "Vera" turned out to be alright, the murders were never in your face violence to the human body, scenes of the crime were for the genre decorous.  And the dialogue was quite witty; I loved it and never wanted it to end.  Plus it featured the most amazingly beautiful scenes of the north of England landscapes.  All good.  Now we have moved to New Zealand for the series "Brokenwood."  Again I marveled, here because of my pathetic ignorance of the world, at the beauty of the forests and open fields, if not quite the grand skyscapes to be found in "Vera." And my liberal heart could be at rest viewing the entirely gorgeous character played by a Maori male.  We are still in the first season I believe, but there is a quality of violence that has crept in to the material that means, I fear, that it is Bye Bye Brokenwood for Beye.  Two shows ago a man kills a woman who walks up to a hut in which she knows someone is hiding and he comes at her with a powerful insecticide spray machine which tears at her skin and eyes causing her to erupt in blood, and leaves her bleeding and then dead.  The next show featured a series of rifle shots by deer hunters needless to say killing one of them, plus scenes of a car wreck and a woman trapped in the ensuing flames, shown more than twice during the program, and a desperate killer found out who tapes two women's mouths shut, forces them to march with hunting rifles at the base of their skulls, then ties them to a deer hoist and hangs them up alive.  Eventually the bad guy gets his deserts and the women go home unscathed, but I . . . . .?  All night I dreamed of these scenes, they played again and again on an endless loop, the face burning in acid, the anguished screams of the woman trapped in the flaming car, the look of horror and desolation of the woman on the deer hoist as the camera pans the maniac staring at her.  Frankly I don't need this.  For whatever reason I am a manic and hysteric from the trauma of my youth. I am eighty seven.  I don't need bad things to happen on television.  I don't mind lying, cheating, deserting, double crossing, and the rest of the repertoire of wretched behaviors, but I don't need to see sadism, masochism and their bodily harm friends on the silver screen.