The murder of a Porn Star, in dubious circumstances......

"A pole dancer, found impaled on her very own pole...."
A call girl, found strangled by her phone....."
A pimp, pumped full of lead....."
A politician, servicing some entirely different needs to that of his voting public.... "

All of the above first sentences to TV program advertisements seem to be intoned by the same local Adelaide voice-over bloke who feels the need to lower his voice an octave and heavily breathe out each word in a Yankee accent in order to emphasise the seriousness - and sordidness - of the crime which certainly will be solved by the NCIS, CSI (Las Vegas, Miami, New York, Vladivostock), 24, Numbers, Inspectors (Morse, Lynley, Taggart, Gadget), the Shield, the Bill, Midsomer Murderers, Trial by Jury, Law and Order, SVU, Alias, Cold Case, or, or......whoever the hell cares!!

Yes, it's just a form of escapism and entertainment. Whilst I might prefer a comedy or LC a rollicking good game of footy, there are clearly plenty of folk out there who love a good grisly death and a 40 minute hunt to find the perpetrator (1 hour show minus the ads). I suppose seeing a dirt poor cleaning lady asphixiated by spilled clorox in the laundry makes for fairly mundane viewing. The voice-over bloke would have a real challenge on his hands: "Dulcie was a simple woman. Just getting on with making a decent, honest living. Unaware of the tragedy to befall her...." We want what we don't normally get to see and the murkier, the better.

As he happily slumped on the sofa after seeing the Crows demolish Port Power, Love Chunks sat through a few of the afore-mentioned advertisements and then wondered out loud if there were any deaths, murders or serious crimes committed in TV detective land that didn't involve prostitutes, pimps, drug pushers, sexual deviants or kinky politicians. Or any murderers who aren't even more depraved, disgusting and weirder than the pond scum they kill off in increasingly creative ways.

These are fair enough questions that naturally led to more being formed in my own grey matter. How come the so-called expert investigators always need to rely on some gothic, head-banging, socially-inept nerd in a laboratory to run their tests? Isn't it convenient too that whatever information they're looking for on computer is found within an instant? This apparently superb technology still seems to feature black screens with green text, ala the Commodore 64s of 1980 or so. Very puzzling.

Why don't any of the heroes or heroines turn on light switches? Instead they seem to prefer living and working in dark, shady laboratories, offices and apartments and searching for their crims in total blackness. Their preferred sources of light appear to be torches, dim lamps or the visual equivalent of the vague glow of a VCR clock. The few times I can bear watching any of these excremental shows always result in my wanting to scream at them to go find and install some bloody fluoro tubes or to open up the curtains and let the sunlight in. I mean how impressed would you be to find the world's most skilled detective/forensic pathologist/surgeon operating by a pen light? Don't these people ever work during the day?

What of their private lives? Are any of them in a happy and fulfilling relationship with a loving and supportive partner? Of course not you naive imbecile, because that'd be as interesting as hearing Mariah Carey talk about her political leanings or fashion influences, wouldn't it. No, they're all single or divorced and come home to dark apartments; listen to their answering machine which is full of messages that they don't want to return and look into their empty fridge which inevitably features one empty take-away container, a jar of pickles and a can of beer which they immediately open as they sit down on their sofa, take off their tie and rub their foreheads in exhaustion.

Their female work partners, are always youngier, spunkier and make witty and prickling verbal sparring partners. They too are lovelorn and like to work 23 hours in the day. I will admit to envying them their skills in being able to out run the enemy whilst wearing spiked heels and being able to wear a blouse that's normally unbuttoned to the waist without any bras or boobs bursting forth during such exertions.

What of their department bosses, who looked 'sick and tired of all this shit' and keep warning the pair to "Keep your disagreements to yourselves, you've got one last chance to prove yourselves before you're out and the DA has my ass." When the case is solved he firstly bawls them out for ignoring all the rules and then grudgingly says something like, "Aw, get outta here before I throw you out," and waves them away with a smile. Then the male lead cracks a very weak joke and they all laugh together in triumph. Until the next week, when another crack-addicted call girl is found in a pool of blood in Senator X's executive washroom......

I then started wondering just why anyone would be stupid enough to start up a Persian carpet gallery business when they all seem to be going out of business or slashing their prices "By up to NINETY PERCENT", but that's another story.