I love the clichés of twee British TV murder mysteries – the village fete, the teacup switch, the gunshot in the dark room – but what I like best is the presence of lots of fantastic old ladies, a group which are underrepresented in nearly every other type of television genre.

In 1999, people over 60 made up 21 percent of the UK population, but just 7 percent of the television population (source) and in 2012 a BBC report (PDF) flagged the absence of older women on TV as a major problem.

I’ve said in another post that for the most part in popular culture, old women are given one of just two identities: dear old biddy or evil crone. In Twee British Murder there is a greater range of stereotypes to be found, although the biddy/crone dichotomy is still there. Through by no means a comprehensive list, I’ve identified five overlapping Twee British Murder character options for older women.

1) The Help

Rosalie Williams as Mrs Hudson. Image: Granada

An army of elderly female housekeepers, cooks, nurses, cleaners and secretaries form a vital part of the machinery of Twee British Murder.

Although they are rarely the killer, and tend to be only incidental victims (when they Know Too Much, for example) they have a vital dramatic function, especially as witnesses.

The cook remembers that someone different from usual offered to take the breakfast tray up to her mistress, the former nanny recalls a crucial detail from a suspect’s past…

It’s these long-suffering souls that make up the bulk of body-finders too, although they’re almost always questioned and dismissed with no further contribution except looking anxious.

But why are the servants and employees so swiftly ruled out? This 1928 article, 20 Rules for Writing Detective Fiction, states that:

A servant must not be chosen by the author as the culprit. This is begging a noble question. It is a too easy solution. The culprit must be a decidedly worth-while person — one that wouldn’t ordinarily come under suspicion.

Of course! Servants are a bunch of crims already: making one of them the murderer would be TOO OBVIOUS.

Moving on. An atypical member of this category is Sherlock Holmes’ tolerant landlady, Mrs Hudson. This is from The Adventure of the Dying Detective:

The landlady stood in the deepest awe of him and never dared to interfere with him, however outrageous his proceedings might seem. She was fond of him, too, for he had a remarkable gentleness and courtesy in his dealings with women.

I am a little obsessed with the 1980s Granada series starring Jeremy Brett as Holmes. In this series, Mrs Hudson (played by Rosalie Williams) is an important part of the small ‘family’ which surrounds the detective. Here’s one of my favourite Mrs Hudson moments, from The Cardboard Box, at 4:40mins in:

2) Frail Rich Lady

Often bedridden, with elaborate medical care requirements, and generally found in a spooky old house surrounded by squabbling, grasping relatives, these women are often trying to make a last minute change to their will when they meet their demise.

Frail Rich Ladies tend to be victims, but can occasionally turns out to be killers. Letitia Blacklock in A Murder is Announced, Laura Welman in Sad Cypress, and Amelia Barrowby in How Does Your Garden Grow? are classic examples from the Christie canon, as is Emily Arundell from Dumb Witness.

Bearing in mind the underlying biddy/crone stereotype binary, most of the above examples are on the biddy side of things. But there’s a fabulous Frail Rich Lady getting her crone on in one of Baroness Orczy’s Lady Molly stories, The Woman in the Big Hat (PDF). She’s 12mins in:

3) Eccentric Spinster

Eccentric Spinsters are also occasionally widows. The important thing is that they have been manless long enough for their eccentricity to flourish.

This is my very favourite old lady character type, and one that I aspire to. One of the best examples is the three sisters in Agatha Christie’s Nemesis. Here they are having tea with Miss Marple, at 7:09 mins in:

I love how there’s a bit of a maiden, mother and crone thing going on, with Clothilde, the more bookish, stereotypable-as-mannish, serious one (crone), Anthea the ‘girly’, immature one (maiden) and their more well-adjusted sister Lavinia, who tries to keep everything under control (mother). Lavinia’s the one who had been married, of course, so she’s coded as noticeably more ‘normal’ than the other two.

The Bradbury-Scott sisters above are at the biddy end of the spinster spectrum, but there’s a fantastic crone version called Honoria Lyddiard in the Midsomer Murders episode Written In Blood. She’s at 5:28 mins in:

Eccentric Spinsters can be victims, witnesses or killers, and can often be found providing another dramatic function: introducing a supernatural, prophetic red herring.

This provides a contrast with the detective’s rational method and cheap thrills for the viewer, as well as obfuscating the sequence of events for both. Prunella Scales turns in a scene-stealing performance as psychic Eleanor Bunsall in another Midsomer Murders episode, Beyond the Grave, and in Dumb Witness one of the two Miss Tripps receives a message for Poirot, at 15:13mins in:

4) Village Busybody

A provincial murder mystery staple. Like the servants and staff, this character provides vital information and misinformation, clues and red herrings for viewers. Without this character, there might be no mystery at all. She is a key witness, frequently a victim because she’s seen or heard something she shouldn’t have, but never the killer.

Although she’s only middle-aged in the TV adaption, Caroline Sheppard is worth a mention because of Agatha Christie’s comment in her autobiography that:

It is possible that Miss Marple arose from the pleasure I had taken in portraying Dr Sheppard’s sister in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. She had been my favourite character in the book – an acidulated spinster, full of curiosity, knowing everything, hearing everything: the complete detective service in the home.

My New Year’s resolution this year was to get the word ‘acidulated’ into every tenth conversation.

While Caroline Sheppard is relatively harmless, her crone counterpart uses her knowledge to manipulate others. Mrs Rainbird is an extremely camp example of this in the Midsomer Murders pilot The Killings at Badger’s Drift at 22mins:

5) Wise Woman

Joan Hickson as Miss Marple. Image: BBC

*Puts on What Would Miss Marple Do? t-shirt*

There’s not enough space here to do her justice, and I haven’t managed to find the perfect clip, but I wanted to share this: in her autobiography Agatha Christie likens Miss Marple to her grandmother in that “though a cheerful person, she always expected the worst of everyone and everything, and was, with almost frightening accuracy, usually proved right.”

That “frightening accuracy” is the hallmark of the Wise Woman, and Marple isn’t the only one in this role solving murders – I’d also put forward Gladys Mitchell’s creation Mrs Bradley.

The glamorous TV version of Mrs Bradley played by Diana Rigg departs pretty drastically from the description of her appearance in the books (she is emphatically witch-like: “She possessed nasty, dry, claw-like hands, and her arms, yellow and curiously repulsive, suggested the plucked wings of a fowl”). Nonetheless, she still provides a worthy crone counterpart to Miss Marple’s biddiness. In this clip, she’s driving away from her ex-husband’s funeral at 3:40mins:

Zoe Brennan, in her book The Older Woman in Recent Fiction, links both Miss Marple and Mrs Bradley (as well as other older women detectives such as Miss Silver and Miss Pym) with feminine archetypes, from fairytale witches to the Furies. This is a connection which Agatha Christie clearly had in mind when one character gives Marple the nickname ‘Nemesis’.

Postscript

For some more info about why this all matters, have a look at Understanding Age Stereotypes and Ageism (PDF). It’s also worth noting that while Twee British Murder is good on age diversity and features a lot of women characters, it fails dismally across other diversity strands.

Emilia Fox as Dr. Nikki Alexander doing a brilliant representation of my Unimpressed Face

She’s a great actress who I think does a lot for Women In Telly, so I was a bit disappointed with the way Dr Nikki Alexander (Fox’s character) has been portrayed in this series of Silent Witness.

***Quick spoiler warning goes here.***

I’ll get to Nikki, but I also wanted to mention that I’ve been a bit dismayed at the BBC’s dumbing-down of the series with woeful stereotypes akin to Channel 4’s recent “Let’s just cause a hoohah to get viewers” strategy. Every episode of Silent Witness this series has pretty much screamed ‘The Police are incompetent and corrupt and evil!’. Topical? You could argue that, but the way they’ve tackled it has been very clumsy and unsophisticated – not like the Silent Witness of previous years. Plus I haven’t heard of any police violently sexually assaulting pimps in public toilets with long wooden implements to death and then covering it up recently – have you?

They’ve also thrown in the old ‘people who play violent video games are all psychopathic killers’ trope – in the first episode no less – which left me with a well defined Unimpressed Face. Really, BBC? You want to play with such obvious, ill-informed, stereotypes? Disappointing.

They certainly haven’t done much for the female figures in this series either, with three suicides, all colleagues or friends of Leo, two of which were women and neither of which were portrayed very well. One also apparently found the draw of Leo’s soft gaze too hard to resist and snogged his face off in a lab despite, her being married and him in a long-term relationship.

The second was a pathologist who challenged a post mortem conclusion of Shaken Baby syndrome (also, quite topical) who Leo took personal action against to make her look like an illogical, flustered fool by using his influence as Head of the Royal Society of Pathologists to say “nah, she’s wrong.”

Nikki studied under this particular LadyPatho and was quick to defend her, but the script made both women look as if they’d been stranded in swathes of stereotypically female overemotionality. It felt like the Beeb had attempted to suggest science is Man’s Domain, what with the way they aired Nikki’s protests that LadyPatho was being purposefully railroaded by a patriarchal pathologist hierarchy, whom she had dared to go against by suggesting something other than their fave shaken baby triad might exist as a cause of infant death.

The potential of this, however, is totally undermined by the acting instructions Fox seems to have followed. By making an accomplished, strong, independent female pathologist who we know – from many years of her gracing our screens – to be a sensible, balanced and intelligent individual, behave in a disorientated, desperate, hysterical, conspiracy-theory, ‘the men are out to get us’ way sort of undermines the whole attempt at a feminists-in-the-mainstream angle. Or just, y’know, that whole taking women seriously thing.

It is difficult for me to accept Emilia Fox’s performance as a betrayal of Nikki, but realistically I don’t see how she could have agreed to play the scene that way without going against Nikki’s intrinsic character. That is certainly disappointing. The series’ new obsession with Lowest Common Denominator dross (probably ordered down through the BBC management levels in order to win some more viewers in these austere times) is also highly disappointing. Though the stories have been, generally, interesting enough, Silent Witness still feels like it’s strayed from its path.

I hope that, for next year’s series, the BBC drop this new Ch4-esque manifesto for just being offensive and shallow in order to viewer-grab away from whatever reality talent show rubbish is on elsewhere. If needs be, just move it to BBC4 and make it a clever criminal show again – it’ll fit in nicely alongside The Bridge and other similarly intelligent drama that treats women with a little bit more respect. There’s no excuse now that analogue TV no longer exists: we’ve all got the digital channels and there’s always iPlayer (even on your Xbox now)!

Katee Sackhoff as Starbuck

Anyhow, on to finer things.

Now, I particularly love Katee Sackhoff as Starbuck in the revamped Battlestar Galatica. And that in itself would be a Found Feminism, if it weren’t already enormously obvious, especially after everyone (well, some bloke) got their knickers in a twist over Starbuck being played by a woman.

For reference, a good interview with Ron Moore, the director, on that decision is here.

We can rejoice in that decision, and also now in the existence of (new) Starbuck as an internet meme.

Which brings me rather meanderingly to the actual Found Feminism. This hashtag: #thingsstarbuckwouldntsay, started off on Twitter by Katee herself.

Personal favourites, hand picked by fellow Bad Repper and Sci Fi nerd, Steve:

Does this flightsuit clash with my highlights?

I’m sure you’re all going the right way, … men always have a better sense of direction.

How many calories are in this drink?

I can’t go yet. I’m finishing my makeup!

Could Things Starbuck Wouldn’t Say be a Skippy’s List for Found Feminism?

So say we all.

• Found Feminism: an ongoing series of images, videos, photos, comics, posters or excerpts – anything really, which shows feminist ideas at work in the everyday world. What’s brightened your day? Share it here – send your finds to [email protected]!

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Bless the Labour government of 1997-2010. They did quite a bit of good. Minimum wage, Northern Ireland and Civil Partnerships are all some of my favourite things, behind whiskers on kittens. They did, however, invent an awful lot of tosh to appear modern and popular.

One of these inventions was the post of Minister for Women. Created in 1997 and given first to Harriet Harman (who was also the last Labour minister to hold the post in 2010), it was meant to look at gender inequality throughout Britain. The post was expanded to look at other inequalities and discrimination in 2007 and now the full title is Minister for Women and Equalities. Because women are so under-represented in Parliament (although you’ll be forgiven for not being bowled over by the number of ethnic minorities either), the specific
title ‘Minister for Women’ has been retained.

I have a few issues with this. One I would like to illustrate using Ainsley Hayes, she of the long blond hair and happy gun-toting Republican ways in Season 2 of The West Wing. When being invited back to her alma mater to debate the Equal Rights Amendment (which specifically stated that discrimination against anyone because of their gender was illegal), Sam assumes she’s all for it. She’s not, and here’s why:

It’s humiliating. A new amendment we vote on declaring that I am equal under the law to a man? I am mortified to discover there is reason to believe I wasn’t before. I am a citizen of this country; I am not a special subset in need of your protection. I do not have to have my rights handed down to me by a bunch of old white men. The same article fourteen that protects you protects me, and I went to law school just to make sure.

You can see her in quite frankly awesome action here.

Emily Proctor as associate White House counsel Ainsley Hayes in The West Wing.

I don’t understand why we are singled out for special rights as if we need protection – we’ve already passed various laws stipulating that I cannot be paid less or treated with disrespect or sexually harassed because of my gender. I’m OK with these laws. I want to see society catch up with our legislation, but I feel that having a specific Minister for people like me who have ovaries is, quite frankly, patronising.

It’s also completely redundant. If they actually did anything to stem the misogyny and discrimination faced by women every day, I’d applaud. But they don’t, because they can’t, because so much of what we face is ingrained within society. We’re slowly turning it around – another hundred years or so and we might be nearly there – but I don’t think having a specific Minister stops any employer in their tracks from giving that woman a smaller pay raise than her male counterpart, or that man over there denying his wife the right to work because he wants her to have his dinner ready every day, or that assistant from cutting and pasting his female boss’ head onto the Page 3 girl and sending it round the office.

Current incumbent Theresa May, image via Wikipedia Commons.

Finally, my huge issue with our Minister for Women and Equalities is that it’s always given to a woman, generally as an additional role to her main ministerial duties. This sends the message that gender equality is something additional, not important enough to be a main duty – and it’s certainly a woman’s issue, nothing for the men to worry about, hur hur. By placing this so predominantly in the female sphere, we are telling men that they don’t need to think about gender equality, that it’s fine for them so they shouldn’t fight for it, that it’s purely something that the discriminated against need to fight for and correct.

Our next Minister for Women and Equalities should be a man. Then they have to argue that women’s rights are a necessity that are already afforded to men without question, that gender inequality affects children of both genders by reducing financial remuneration and by encouraging stereotypes, that maybe, just maybe, men can be feminists too. Sad that having a man in the role would make other men sit up and notice, but at this point in time, I’m willing to use all my tools in my box. If they won’t listen to women’s issues when declared by a woman, then maybe it’s time for the testosterone to even things up a little and help bring gender equality into the male-dominated public sphere.

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