What's With All The Murder Porn?

Okay, I get that you like bad guys.

So you've got Dexter (a serial killer), The Sopranos (organised crime), Hannibal (another serial killer) and Breaking Bad (a dying chemistry teacher becomes a meth cook and criminal kingpin just to raise funds for medical treatment) to enjoy on reruns and boxsets. Arguably, you could say the same about The Mentalist (a con artist and murderer working as a police consultant).

But to me, it's like redneck porn - the topic of another conversation I'll be having down the line.

Murder porn shows like these are lazy television.

They are easy to make, with little outlay on sets and props. They can use scripts dredged out of any old cop shows, living or dead, with an episodic format and maybe a long-running plot arc to spice things up.. Just add the murder scene du jour where it's the protagonist doing the killing (and the cooking) for a change.

But it's cheap - and worst of all, it is nasty.

The stories are about evil people, committing acts which you could not get away with in real life - and getting away with it, over and over. It's wish fulfillment and pandering to the lowest common denominator.

And it's making murder look sexy and glamourous; a career option to the desperate and the weak.

Okay, let's try this little Gedankenexperiment.

Let's say you pitch a story about a sexy, hot, glamourous man who has a really successful life as a TV stage hypnotist. He has his own show, where he entertains the masses and the audience, and his subjects.

Only problem is ... he's a slaver and a rapist.

Yes, the bad guy is a glamourous rapist, who seduces, hypnotises, rapes and makes his victims forget that they'd been raped. When he picks his subjects for the show, he implants a suggestion in the prettiest one to come back to his dressing room after the show, so he can have his wicked way with her.

And every week, he gets away with it because he roofies up his victims with scopolamine so they can't remember a damned thing. And as he's a consulting psychologist for the Los Angeles Police Department, he's always on hand to perform "regression therapy" on the victims, if the cops need someone to try and dredge up the memories of the rapes.

Yeah. There's the elevator pitch done. Now let's throw this tawdry, vulgar, cruel premise to the TV execs and see which of those unevolved Hollywood primates actually picks up the option, shall we? And meantime, he's also into human trafficking - mostly sexy women and young girls from Mexico, Japan, Korea, Russia and Eastern Europe. Including underage slaves.

Don't like it? Stomach churning? Good. If you are sickened at the thought of that, now you know how I feel from thinking of all of the shows above.

Bear in mind that they have yet to go that far as to set up a series like that - but, seeing as they've already lionised the Mob, serial killers and cannibals, it is only a matter of time before they decide that it's okay to glamourise amoral rapists and sexual deviants. And by making such shows popular, it's you, the viewer, who has opened the door.

Or maybe you could do what I do, when deviant porn is foisted upon you - the originals, and the inevitable copycats that follow.

Turn that bloody television off, until they start putting on good shows again.