Radio Times

Pass me that gown and those wellingtons will you, please, I'm about to watch some telly. While you're at it, a pair of goggles might not go amiss. How about protecting the living room carpet with a few old newspapers? And some plastic sheeting on the sofa, maybe?

I'm making a fuss, because watching mainstream dramas recently has had what I can only describe as a certain abattoir dimension. Blood, dear readers, is everywhere. Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that, but when did things get so very, very gory, with extreme, graphic, gagging violence?

No adult with an ounce of common sense who watches grown-up, post-watershed television wants or expects to be confronted with adaptations of Bambi or The Railway Children, because surely nobody minds anything that's brutal and challenging.

But dearie me, a man flayed alive in a gay sauna in Apparitions? A woman with her face cut off in Silent Witness? A series of scalpings by an axe-wielding serial killer in Wallander? When did television turn into a butcher's slab?

Of course, there are series that have always had a high ick-factor - Messiah and Wire in the Blood spring to mind - which is fair enough, I suppose. If you don't like blood and dismembering, then you don't watch. You know what to expect.

What I object to is being caught out by what has become routine yuckiness. Earlier this year the chances were if you tuned in to any popular drama series you'd see a beheading (Bonekickers, Waking the Dead), which was bad enough.

But we just seem to be pushed further and further into gore-fests of a type you'd expect to see in an 18-certificate film, rather than on television. I don't like the deadening effect of extreme violence. So we've now witnessed a victim being skinned alive - where do we go from here? (And you can be certain we will go somewhere from here - television doesn't stay still.)

Maybe I'm an old-fashioned girl at heart. I love to be scared vicariously, but gore isn't frightening, it's just sick-making and sometimes distressing.

Give me a bit of mind-bending psychological horror and I'm happy. Clever stuff of wit and imagination, like the ghost stories of MR James - can anyone ever sleep in a twin-bedded room again after reading Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad? Remember the brilliant 1960s/70s Ghost Story for Christmas television adaptations of the James stories? Will you show them again this Christmas please, BBC4, as you did a few years ago?

Now this was scary stuff, full of shadows and suggestion, and not a blood-spatter to be seen.

I am no fan of gore but the recent Wallander programmes have been very enjoyable. I hope we see a new series soon.

Talking about gory,one of my fascinations with Wallander is that the front doors all seem to open out not in.As I'm at the top of 13 steps and get a seemingly unending line of doorstep callers at the most unsuitable times,the opportunities for opening my door and careering the caller down the stairs causing all sorts of havoc does tickle my gory bone somewhat!

Talk about missing the point!!! I looked in on this for some insight into Wallander. On reflection Alison's review was of no help at all. Luckily I went with a friends recommendation.

Alison, how about finding out a little something on the author and the adaption and telling me about what you discovered? Mankell appears to have a lot to say about issues of humanity and society and has a worldwide reputation for this.

Don't suppose I'll be dipping into your reviews again.

yes there has been some gore in Apparitions and indeed the first episode might have shocked but on the whole the series has been excellent and I am looking forward to tonights episode - the last- hoping that all will be made clear. Is Father Jacob all he seems or is he not? In an earlier episode he said that the 'demon' had to appear to a virgin implying that he was not. Would love to know how he came to be a priest. There are so many hidden depths to this character. Could Ray doyle of CI5 have turned to religion as a revulsion against all the killing he had done? By the way and a propos of nothing Martin Shaw looks gorgeous in a beard!!

Tonights Apparitions was gripping stuff. Depth to the characters, the plot and brilliant photography. The gore was in context, and made the drama more real and powerful. So I say stand firm programme makers.

If you thought the UK Wallander was bad you should see the Swedish version. More please.

Alison Graham is right. It would be interesting to know, though, what drives the programme makers to show more and more disgusting scenes and images. Even Wallander, which is an enjoyable drame, can't quite do without.

Do they think that viewers want or expect it? Rather worrying if so. Please, can we have more subtle and character-based detective drama?

Have you watched the Wallander films yet, Alison? Wallander is the caring, thinking person's detective, and such men do have to deal with violence and 'gore', but it is almost incidental in Henning Mankell's books, which are much more interested in the development of society and inter-personal relationships. I have lived in Sweden and read the Wallander books in Swedish, and I know that Henning Mankell and many Swedes set very high standards for their country and society and are very worried about any signs of slipping away from these standards. However, Sweden has a long way to slip before it reaches the level of day-to-day violence and criminality we experience in the UK.

I so agree with Alison about too much TV violence, and I'm sure most women would agree. I find extreme violence sick-making and distressing too. As you say, I've always known to avoid "Wire in the blood", but I had hoped to watch "Wallander" (I didn't when I realised how violent it would be). I'd say the overwhelming success of Mamma Mia shows that most women feel the same - not, of course, that we want only to watch fluffy escapism. Like Alison, I love psychological thrillers, and a certain level of violence is to be expected in detective stories, which I also love. TV should be challenging, and not just wrap us in a cosy cocoon, but there is simply far too much gore.

Am I the only one that thought that the on going battle between heaven and hell might not be all flowers and pretty vista's or that police drama's would only be about cats stuck up trees. The very nature of these programmes seem to focus on acts of violence and gore due to the topics covered, I personally find that the gore of these programs add to the suspense and drama of the shows. The scripts seem decent enough for main stream television and are in no way diminished because of the gore featured in the programme as some comments have insinuated.

I thinck this is so bad, I am lost for words to describe how bad I thinck it is.

I cautiously, very cautiously, agree. This is not because of having any particular objection to the depiction of shocking crime in drama. Most viewers should have a pretty clear idea of what they're watching when they tune into a genre show and know what to expect. I think where my opinion coincides with Alison's argument is in the domains of subtlety and placement. As a bit of a speculative fiction genre freak I had been looking forward to Jo Aherene's Apparitions since the very first mention of it in a magazine some eleven months prior to broadcast. The first episode was a corker, crafty, the intrigue was as much political as it was occult based and, significantly, the exorcism was dialogue and performance driven, effects free and therefore having a creepy believability to it. Afterwards I emailed a friend raving in glowing terms about how this was the occult thriller the world had been waiting for and a worthy successor to and improvement on American product of similar ilk. I can't say episodes two and three were disappointing as such, but the drama has opted for a gore content after all. It could have been far superior to the likes of The X-Files and Supernatural if only it had kept the symptoms of possession and its bloodier fall-out as unseen abstracts for the most part; the threat posed by Hell's agents in the series is certainly most substantial in what is said rather than in any visual spectacle on display. Having said that, I shall be watching it tonight and for the remaining episodes. Maybe it's enough to have a mostly mature British answer to the sometimes immature American genre pieces, but on the strengths of episode one I thought we'd be getting something more cerebral, instead it's more typically horror than it is groundbreaking. I've seen so much of the blood and mayhem strain that it ceases to have much impact beyond appreciating it technically, it's ideas that are terrifying, the gore factor should only lend support to that principle, not take centre stage. Moving on, I caught up with Wallander on BBC iPlayer. Here I have to disagree. The crime made sense for the storyline and I'd have to argue it was well placed, albeit gruesome, but not much was actually shown, it was mostly implied. Perhaps the saddest tendency has been in the recent screen expressions of torture. I'm an eager viewer of the American series 24, yet I'm constantly disheartened by the supposedly heroic Jack Bauer's interrogation methods. It might be a reflection of the times, but do we really want to have torture presented to us as justifiable under certain circumstances? Surely not. On the British end, the much loved Spooks has been guilty of the same over the years, although a recent episode where Sir Harry Pearce was subjected to it actually treated the subject with the appropriate amount of dismay without it being too graphic. All in all, I'd say harsh violence has its place in televised fiction so long as it lends greater emphasis to the themes within the plot and doesn't take over as being the main sensationalist purpose for watching. Surprisingly, the zombie horror spoof on Big Brother, ch4's Dead Set, managed to be extremely hard-hitting and gory, yet cleverly so and the drama and its message would have lost something if that had been toned down. I guess it's a case of matching the correct type of shock to the narrative. Let's face it, be it crime, espionage, horror or an alien menace, writing and filming fiction is no easy task, it takes a lot of art, a lot of craft and a lot of brains to get it spot on. The careful treatment of violent content is crucial to the process. It may not matter how much of it is on display as much as how intelligently and sensitively it's handled. Personally, I'd like to see the likes of Jack Bauer go to prison, but that won't stop me watching the next season of 24. Oh, well, it's only TV!

I completely disagree. You know what your in for when you watch the programme and if u dont like it, dont watch it! a bit of gore doesnt do any harm and if it were all roses and pansies then there would be no tension and it would end up like an episode of mid summer murders!

I am agree of Ali son. These comments are very lovely and useful.

I think that much of the violence and gore on TV is gratuitous. It adds nothing to the story to see people being dismembered, but we're treated to it nonetheless. It's nothing new though. I was a keen fan of Spooks until Keeley Hawes had her head pushed in a deep-fat fryer. That was truly sickening - I had several nightmares after that and thereafter refused to watch Spooks on principle.

On the other hand, I am hooked by Apparitions. Yes, there was some very unpleasant gore in the first episode, but it was well-signposted and I simply looked away when the act is question happened. I could have done without it and the story/suspense would not have suffered had that scene not been shown in such detail.

Unfortunately, the level of violence in film and computer games means that TV probably feels it has to keep up with the Joneses.

I couldn't agree more. Gore isn't scary to me, it's just nasty. It hasn't put me off watching the excellent Apparitions (I've sky+ Wallander but glad I've been warned) but to me the gore was totally unnecessary. We can actually use our imaginations and don't need the violence to be graphically rammed down our throats. In today's society the less violence on screen the better. People will become so used graphic violence on TV it will no longer have the shock factor, become everyday and then I dread to think how this will affect impressionable members of the viewing public. I would never say 'no gore' but let's make it an on-screen rarity.

This is obviously a male/female thing since apart from Thomas it's the women who agree with Alison. It's such a pity though that she put Kate off watching the excellent Wallander. I really feel she should have followed her instincts, watched it and made up her own mind about the level of gore which was pretty minimal.

I haven't seen Apparitions, but I do totally disagree with Alison on Wallander. In comparison to Waking the Dead and similar dramas, very little gore was actually shown. The emphasis was on character development, not sensationalism or cheap horror. It contains very thoughtful acting and superb photography.

I can't believe that Alison has actually watched the episode in full.

I'm a viewer and I'm powerless.

I have just received my postal copy of RT and as usual I read it right through in one day. I came across Alison Graham's column on Feel good TV. An excellent article of which sentiment I whole heartedly agree with.

However, If I may add my 2p's worth.

I watch a variety of programs across a good range of channels, and Brit TV to me, seems to have lost the plot with regard to providing a full range of products. Some of the stuff coming out of the US at the moment is really starting to hit the mark. Whereas at one time we used to refer to it as schmaltzy drivel, they do now tackle relationships with depth and gusto.

Each week Grays Anatomy dwells on an aspect of human relationship that does not always necessarily resolve itself in perfection. Is that not a reflection of how real live is? And yet none of the regulars were reduced to a gory mess; yes perhaps a sobbing heap of mental anguish over a mistake they or another character had made. But isn't that what happens in real life? Do we not all in private wish we had handled some recent relationship differently?

This week in Life (ITV3) Damian Lewis' character Crews had his female partner dealing with Alcoholism while solving the crime. After a forced relapse she ended the show with the words "I'm an alcoholic and I'm powerless". Not all issues are fixed within an hour. We understand that, please give us credit.

These US shows do not treat their audiences with distain; please, we are intelligent we do understand what is going on; we can read between the lines, we understand what sub text is. Please programmers or controllers credit us with some intelligence; allow us to learn from the message contained within the show. A little subtly goes a long way. As long as there is conflict that can be resolved without necessarily ending in blood and guts everywhere, there can still be a story worth telling.

So much now we; the audience, are powerless about program content. My family and I cannot watch Jamie Oliver or Gordon Ramsey because of the fowl language yet we do sympathise with what they are trying to do; It's their and their sponsors loss not ours.

At least I was protected from the Russell Brand and Jonathon Ross fiasco because I choose not to watch or listen to them.

I'm a viewer; please give me the power to think it through for myself; and, even talk about the subject with another viewer if I feel the need too.

Mr Edd

Don't be ridiculous. Apparitions is great tense drama, with excellent production and music to boot. Martin Shaw is even better than as the Judge. If this keeps going, this series will be almost half as good as Dexter itself.

I wholeheartedly agree with Alison. For sometime now I have been saying to my husband that the gore has gone too far and spend a lot of time averting my gaze. I have finally taken a stand and have stopped watching Wire in The Blood and only managed to watch one and a quarter episodes of Apparitions. If Wallander proves to be the same I shall also turn that off. It's a pity because the actors and dramas are good but they do keep forcing this gore down our throats.

I was planning to try out the new Wallender series tonight. Now, having read Alison Graham (whose opinion I value absolutely) I am reconsidering. I loathe graphic gore: my imaginination is quite vivid enough without the need for illustration. If it were a movie I wouldn't go.

I absolutely agree with Alison. apparitions is a good example of TV going another stage further down the blood/ shock/horror line. Please bring back well written scripts and drama to entertain not sicken.

Yes indeed - I was particularly disappointed to have to turn off the second episode of Apparitons due to the unnecessary gore. A fan of Martin Shaw - esp Judge John Deede - I am in two minds whether to tune in and try the third episode but I thionk not because after a hard day's work I do not want to be subjected to that.

I absolutely agree with Alison; if you wanted to watch mindless gory violence you might hire horror films on video in the past, I never could see the appeal. It seems to me that there is enough real violence in the world, without seemingly finding enjoyment from watching the worst potrayal of it. Human beings can be so utterly unbelievably cruel in their treatment of others. I would not wish for totally sterile entertainment, as Alison says some of the scariest films and programs are the psychologically frightening ones..Our best loved TV detectives have never featured gore, we know that what has happened is awful, sometimes really awful, but that's enough, we don't need the bits of body thrust in front of our eyes. In other scenarios, for example in battle scenes it's obvious that body parts might be sliced etc. but you don't tend to have the camera lingering endlessly on the gore, because the dramas is elsewhere. Please can we all be allowed to use our imaginations a bit more, it's gone too far, and no it does not need to go further. please can we not have this nastiness creeping further and further in to so called entertainment, thankyou.

I agree with Alison. We've lost wit and suspense and are now presented with tv that is so far fetched it's difficult to connect with. I'll watch Wallander because I've read the books, where the level of gore is up to your imagination.