I think I’m watching too much TV/online streaming platforms at the moment. But I’m starting to notice things that are beginning to annoy me big time. For instance:

Orphan Annie

Female characters who wear the sleeves of their oversized sweater pulled over their hands as if they’re orphan children left out in the cold. I assume it’s supposed to be sexy, the Vulnerable-Little-Woman syndrome, and falls into the same category as pearl-pink lipstick in 19th Century Russia. (Although Julie Christie got away with it.) Of course, this may just be envy, seeing as I was six foot at fifteen!

In the same vein, women who wear their jumper slipped casually over one naked shoulder. Have you ever worn your jumper like that? Even by mistake? Because if you have, you’ll know that it’s phenomenally irritating and all you want to do is haul it back into place.

And again, the women detectives on British TV who wear heels to work. They dash up rusty metal ladders in deserted warehouses and wade through mud to the riverbank to examine dead bodies in shoes better suited to their sister’s wedding.

If you watch Scandi-noire, or even Euro-noire – which we do quite a lot – the female detectives wear the equivalent of Doc Martens and look fantastic – proper professional women, not the glossy mag types that are the Brit equivalent.

The infamous wall-slide

Characters, men or women this time, who slide down walls when in distress. Am I missing something? Is this a thing? If I’m distressed I sit on the nearest chair or sofa or hurl myself onto a bed. But regularly on screen there are these actors doing the infamous wall-slide, ending up in a heap on the cold floor to weep. Maybe it’s again just jealousy on my part, because my knees aren’t what they used to be, but I do feel they’d be more comforted if they used the furniture instead.

Guild for Maligned Teenagers

Then there’s the main protagonist who has the dysfunctional teenage daughter. It’s always a girl, never an annoying boy. They’re astonishingly rude to their parent and completely moronic/incompetent – even by teenage standards – getting themselves into all kinds of hot water, from which said protagonist, (whose parenting skills, admittedly, probably leave much to be desired), then have to extricate them. If I were still a teenager, I’d form the Guild of Maligned Teenagers to protest.

And why do characters always chop carrots when they’re cooking? Does the carrot community demand Above The Title billing? The amount of carrots eaten – or at least chucked into saucepans – on screen should certainly warm the cockles of the Five-A-Day mob. But couldn’t we have a bit more imagination? Maybe a courgette or two, a nice bulb of fennel, a spud? There’s no evidence of what dish emerges from all these carrots… I’d love to know.