I have found a new thing to be annoyed by in T.V. programmes, films, and books – words and accents.  I didn’t mean for this to happen.  Normally it’s the science, history, or geography that bothers me.

I can’t watch something that’s supposedly set in Paris when I can tell it’s being shot at a sound studio somewhere in America.  Marty used to watch Alias and I thought it was awful.  Every week they went to a different fake location.

I can’t cope with your fictional story if your factual elements are wrong.  Singers shouldn’t sing songs that hadn’t been composed when your story was set.  Cities should be called by the name they were known by then and not the name we are calling them now.

Accents have bothered me before but usually only fake Irish ones.   I was watching Spooks recently and was driven mad by the fake American accent of one of the characters.  It’s strange how I can believe all sorts of conspiracy theories but throw in a fake accent and I can’t cope anymore.

Last night I watched the start of Season 4 of Bones.  It was set in London.  That concept made me cringe.  I imagined a room full of screen-writers dying to try out their favourite quirky British phrases.  I had to listen to people talk about “shameless rogues” and “wretched rags”.  Do real people actually say, “hells, bells, and buckets”?  It could have been worse.  Recently I read a novel where the main English character talked like a reject from a Carry On film or got confused and talked like an American.  (No old English man is ever going to talk about his luggage arriving “momentarily”).

If you want people to suspend belief and enjoy science fiction, fantasy, or even a crime thriller you have to get the factual things they can verify right.  I can believe in a vampire with a soul but give him a dodgy Irish accent and I start to doubt everything.