SHHH!!! SPOILERS! (PART ONE)

During the course of the following babblings there will be a moment when I definitely claim to have an opinion on something, there will be a passing reference to pornography that will no doubt disappoint its many fans, and an unnamed former colleague of mine will not be named and shamed despite me feeling that he probably deserves to be. Oh yes, and there’s a bit right at the end which refers to wrist-slapping which probably won’t turn out to be half as interesting as it probably sounds. I hope that knowing all that doesn’t ruin the experience of reading today’s witterings, but instead entices you and intrigues you enough to make you want to read more…

A couple of days back, I had the misfortune to read an internet spat about so-called ‘spoilers’, those little snippets of information that tend to leak out and ‘spoil’ the enjoyment of a storyline unfolding at its proper pace for television shows. Personally I would prefer to call them “ruiners” myself, but then that’s probably just me. Just in case you haven’t guessed already, well, I suppose that I should clamber down off the fence and nail my colours firmly to the mast, whilst wondering, not unreasonably I feel, quite what the heck a fence is doing on the good ship “Mixed Meta 4” anyway.

Anyway, I flippin’ well detest spoilers. There, I’ve been and gone and said it now, haven’t I? There’s no hanging about, we’ve got straight to the point. I utterly, utterly loathe them. When it comes to a story, on TV, in a film or even a book, I’d rather know absolutely nothing in advance and be totally (and hopefully delightfully) surprised by the twists and turns of that story unfolding as per the writers’ and/or directors’ intentions than be able to sit there and smugly say to myself that I know exactly what’s about to happen in a piece of drama that’s supposed to be entertaining me. Isn’t part of the entertainment the fact that it can surprise you? Doesn’t that add hugely to the enjoyment and satisfaction of the experience?

I never really understand the almost pornographic glee that magazines and newspapers containing articles about soap operas seem to display in telling everyone the most specific details of the upcoming episodes and plot lines, sometimes months in advance. There’s an argument that this builds up the anticipation almost to the point of a frenzy and that, of course, ultimately pays off in terms of the ratings (and newspaper sales), but surely there would be more enjoyment if you were taken completely delightfully by surprise by a twist in a storyline that you thought you understood so well that it had become almost mundane or ordinary???

Is it perhaps something about the way the mind of the soap opera fan works? It seems incredible to me because I don’t follow any of them, but there are so many people whose enjoyment of those programmes actually seems to be enhanced by the advanced knowledge of how things are going to turn out. Maybe it’s a deep-seated desire to have a sense of satisfaction that things are unfolding as they should, or maybe it’s a need to know what is going to happen but not quite know how it is going to unfold. Maybe it comes from a generation of video game players wanting to ‘solve’ things and knowing that there’s a ‘right’ direction things are going to go in, or perhaps it comes from growing up in an environment where you could watch a film over and over again, as often as you wanted to. It is perfectly possible that the pre-home video generations just wanted different things from their storytelling. However, I’ve heard it said that a great many people apparently choose to read the end of a book before they start to actually read it, although that really doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, especially if you’re reading a “whodunnit”. I don’t know, perhaps people want to feel ‘safe’ with their entertainment media, or maybe that’s why watching sport is so much more popular these days because it still has the capacity to surprise you when the result is an unknown.

Spoilers about hearing the football results before you settle down to watch the game you recorded are the stuff that legends (and “Likely Lads” plots) are made of. I fully remember making a phone call to congratulate someone about some result or other I knew would mean a lot to them only to find out that they were about to sit down and watch the recording they’d just made of it because they’d been out. Perhaps this is one of the many reasons why I seldom ring people up any more.

Surely some of the most memorable “TV Moments” in history are memorable precisely because no-one saw them coming? The final episode of “Blake’s 7” springs immediately to my awkward, geekish, nerdy old mind here, but there used to be so many others; Henry Blake in “M*A*S*H” and Robert Powell in “DoomWatch” being just two of the others that come immediately to mind. These are the events that become part of the shared culture of a generation and the stuff of TV legend.

How much more of a shock would it have been to those young fans of the revived “Dr Who” if Christopher Eccleston’s sudden unexpected departure at the end of that first series had managed to have remained a complete surprise to the viewing millions? Oops! Spoiled that now, haven’t I? Or have I? Wouldn’t the excited chatter in the playground on the following Monday have been the stuff they would look back on as being one of the most magical television moments of their young lives?

Now that I’ve got myself all worked up, I’ve begun to realise that this particular epic has started to go on far too long, and I’ve not even got round to many of the things I promised you in my opening paragraph. This will have to mean that, in order to make it even remotely bearable, I’m going to have to split it in half and leave you on some kind of almighty cliff…

NEXT TIME: “How do you tease people…?” “There’s a good bit at the end, well, not really the end, but near the end…” “Always got a boost from his colleagues…” “There’s a twist at the end” “It’s the old problem…”  “My friend’s arm had unwittingly taken much of the brunt of it instead…” “I’m going to let myself off with little more than a slap on the wrist….”

“SHHH!!! SPOILERS! (PART TWO)” - the eagerly anticipated and ultimately disappointing, bloated and over-long sequel, coming soon to Lesser Blogfordshire…