Dear American television, we need to talk

[bookzombie]

Dear American television, you remember when I had to have words with you about that episode of Covert Affairs, that had scenes in Cambden's 'Warehouse District' (clue: UK cities are not constructed like US cities)?

I'd long forgiven you for this, but now we have to talk about The Librarians.

Now, I know that this is supposed to be a bit of entertaining fluff, but may I point out a few things:

1. The Crown Jewels don't look like that - and isn't just a crown, by the way, otherwise it would be 'The Crown Jewel' or possibly just 'The Crown'...
2. I'm pretty sure you can't just get within touching distance of them
3. No part of the Tower of London is built of modern breezeblocks
4. Buckingham Palace is a - relatively - modern building (built in 1703) and thus does not have dungeons
5. By the way, London has no real association with any particular version of the Arthur legend (that I'm aware of anyway, though I'm happy to be corrected!) If you had set these bits of the story in Tintagel or Glastonbury then you could have got away with the hand-waving

(To be fair, I'm pretty sure that UK series have made equally stupid scenes set in the US, though this does feel like the equivalent of showing the White House in the middle of a field in Kansas.)

I think what irritates me about this is this is something that would take a quick look at Wikipedia to fix, though I wouldn't be surprised if they knew and just weren't worried. And it's obvious that the budget wasn't big (CGI explosions are very CGI), so maybe that had to use what sets they had.

Overall it was a bit of a disappointment; despite coming from the people who made the smart Leverage it was dumb as rocks - like a less intelligent version of Warehouse 13 (which had its own moments of extreme dumb, but had a much more believable and likeable cast.) Maybe it will settle down as it goes to series - I'm willing to give it another couple of episodes before giving up - but my hopes aren't high.

Comments

[pennski.livejournal.com]

I think we are violently agreeing.
The TV had honey badgers.
The book had British badgers.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

The TV had bloody raccoons.

And it was set, supposedly, in the UK.

[bookzombie.livejournal.com]

Sorry to spoil a promising argument, but you are both wrong - though the TV series is too! Some very kind person has uploaded the series on YouTube and roughly 21 minutes into the first episode the badger appears.

It's not a Honey badger, a raccoon or a British badger: what it shows is an American badger. So still completely wrong, but a different completely wrong...

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Well, that is extremely odd, unless it was edited later - the badgers don't interact much with the people - because there were letters to the Radio Times and on Points of View all stating that it was a raccoon. And I know a raccoon when I see one...

Not that the American Badger is actually a badger, just as the American Elk is not an elk, or the pronghorn an antelope.

[bookzombie.livejournal.com]

I guess it's possible that the raccoons may turn up in later episodes? I'll be honest: it's not a series I am fond enough of that I'd want to bother watching the whole thing again...