Jekyll & Hyde TV Series Upsets Delicate Viewers
David Gelmini
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Brace yourselves… the censorship advocates are coming! After the new British TV series “Jekyll & Hyde” was broadcast on October 25th, Ofcom (the Office of Communications, basically an organization that you can whine to if you feel that something is not up to your standards of decency; I’m sorry to say that such an organization exists) received over 500 complaints about the show’s violent content.
See, in the UK, we have something known as a watershed, which dictates what can and can’t be shown on TV at certain times. And apparently “Jekyll & Hyde” breached the watershed by airing at 6:30 pm when it actually should have been shown after 9:00 pm because of its violent content. Truly the crime of the century. I mean, what the hell do you expect from a series called “Jekyll & Hyde”? “Dora the Explorer” it ain’t.
Well, Ofcom has decided to take action against the broadcaster, ITV, saying “Ofcom has carefully assessed a number of complaints about ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ on ITV. We are opening an investigation into whether the programme complied with our rules on appropriate scheduling and violent content before the watershed.”
ITV will move the series forward 30 minutes to 7:00 pm, which doesn’t really solve anything as it’s still behind the 9:00 pm watershed. Almost as if they want the controversy. I wouldn’t put it past them. You have to understand that the network is primarily known for god-awful reality TV and painfully unfunny sketch shows, so it seems that its audience, which have had their brains lowered to such an extent by watching the trash that they put out, felt so horrified when an intelligent programme like “Jekyll & Hyde,” which actually requires them to think, came along that they felt they just had to complain.
Thankfully, the series’ writer, Charlie Higson, employs that most dangerous of weapons, something that advocates of censorship will never be worthy of wielding: common sense. Here’s what he had to say:
“Seems to be a veritable twitter-storm of tweets in support of #JekyllandHyde telling scaredy cats to grow up and get with the modern world..Let’s ban everything that might give children nightmares. Clowns, Santa Claus, big dogs, that dressing gown on the back of the bedroom door..We can’t protect our children from being scared but we can prepare them for it by exposing them to harmless scares so they learn how to cope.”
The series follows Doctor Jekyll’s grandson, Robert, who has inherited his father’s gift, or curse, as he decides whether he should use it to benefit himself or others. It remains to be seen how the controversy will affect the show, but let’s hope that it doesn’t have much of an impact.
Although the concept of the watershed (don’t ask me why it’s called that) may be alien to US audiences, it does mean that censorship rarely happens on British TV. Editing out offensive content is pretty much nonexistent because the watershed clearly states that anything can be shown at a certain time. I remember all too well when my friends refused to believe me after I tried to explain to them that on American TV, swear words are sometimes dubbed with nonsensical replacements, such as how The Big Lebowski’s “Do you see what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass?” became “Do you see what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps?” Yeah, they thought I was talking nonsense, and to be honest, I wish I was. But the watershed stops things like this from happening, so it does have its benefits.
Categorized:News
