I watched “Where Eagles Dare” again recently. If you missed it, worry not. BBC2 show it every fortnight alongside “The Heroes Of Telemark”.
In “Eagles”, the German officers speak perfect English as they did in most British and American war films.
It might lack ‘authenticity’, but cinemagoers (and later, TV viewers) could understand what was going on.
That same evening, I watched a BBC thriller series set in Colombia that featured acres of barely readable English subtitles as the local villains conversed in their own language.
It may have added to the show’s ‘gritty authenticity’, but I’m sure I wasn’t the only viewer who got irritated squinting at the tiny white subtitles and switched off what otherwise looked like an excellent series.
Makers of today’s TV thriller, espionage and police procedural series blithely assume every single viewer (and married ones) possess eyesight that’s so good it’d make an eagle, on the look-out for its prey, green with envy.
Because ever since mobiles and smart phones have been in general use, TV dramas invariably include close-ups of phone screens showing texts or ‘WhatsApps’ that major characters send each other.
Sometimes, the text is so small or on screen for such a short time, it’s possible to miss what might have been a vital clue.
I say ‘might’ have been, because even though my eyesight isn’t bad for a man of my age (although not that great for a man of 125) I often find it hard to read every word.
What is the point of hinting at ‘Who Dun It’, if we ‘Can’t Read It’?
Of course, I know modern TV has to show characters using mobile phones, but why do they have to text and WhatsApp so often?
In those glorious vintage films that the Talking Pictures TV Channel screens, which were made long before mobiles were invented, characters pick up a home or office phone, or go into a red phone box, and engage in telephone conversations.
Because we hear what they’re saying, there’s less chance viewers will lose the plot.
Oi! Who said, “Phil, you lost it years ago”?