James Delingpole James Delingpole

If you want to avoid intrusive anachronisms on TV, you have to go foreign

James Delingpole is currently hooked to the doomed love-triangle in German drama Funeral for a Dog

Despite the confusing flashbacks, I'm hooked: Alina Tomnikov as Tuuli Kovero, Friedrich Mücke as Mark Svensson & Daniel Sträßer as Felix Blaumeiser. Image:© Sky / Flare Entertainment GmbH

The iron law of TV these days is that if you want to avoid series that are suffocatingly right-on the only way to go is foreign. Any TV emanating from the Anglosphere is guaranteed to be chock-full of intrusive anachronisms. Bridgerton,which reinvents Regency England as a melting pot of diversity, is an extreme example of this, but even previously immune series have been infected. Season five of The Last Kingdom now has a resident black monk, whose ethnicity no one notices, though such a phenomenon, you might think, would have been considered quite remarkable in 10th-century Wessex. Vikings, too, I gather, has allowed its shield wall to collapse and has been overrun by the forces of skinny soy latte.

But in Germany (and even more so the Spanish-, French- and Italian-speaking regions) they’re a good five or ten years behind the curve. In the land of the subtitle they still subscribe to the old-fashioned view that quality and verisimilitude should take precedence over finger-wagging lecturettes. Hence my optimism about Funeral for a Dog, a Sky Atlantic series originally from Germany, based on a bestselling novel by Thomas Pletzinger.

Any TV emanating from the Anglosphere is guaranteed to be chock-full of intrusive anachronisms

My main objection to it so far (I’ve only seen one episode) is the disjointed time sequences. These are yet another curse of the modern age. I’ve been gorging on C.S. Forester recently: prior to the second half of the 20th century, writers seem to have been perfectly capable of constructing a satisfying plot without having to confuse us with flashbacks, multiple viewpoints and other stylistic tricksiness.

I suppose contemporary critics will hail this as a sign of growing audience sophistication. Our social media-addled but meme-literate attention spans have blessed us with the gift of racing minds capable of flitting through and expertly deciphering complexity.

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