The 1989 Taggart Christmas special was apparently broadcast a little early - on the 5th of September. As with most of series creator Glenn Chandler's episodes, this is a cleverly written piece where multiple seemingly-unrelated plot strands get neatly tied together by the time the end credits roll and the iconic theme music plays us out.
Taggart's complaints that Christmas decorations are going up too early on the 14th December seems absurdly old-fashioned from 30 years on, and it is amusing to see the relief on his face when he is rescued from spending Christmas Day with his relatives to go on a case.
The case itself has no connection with Christmas. A seemingly motiveless murder sees Taggart and his sidekick Detective Sergeant Jardine following up any lead in desperation, including the victim's hobbies. On the night she was murdered, she had been attending a Tabletop Roleplaying Game session, and Taggart sends Jardine along to speak to the other players, inevitably resulting in his joining them for a game.
This gives us a rare (possibly even unique) instance of a mainstream television drama portraying RPGs in the Scotland of the late 1980s. The players of the game are shown to be mildly eccentric, but no more so than is typical TV shortpaw for characters involved in an obscure hobby - certainly there are no signs of the 'Satanic Panic' stereotype that afflicted American players of Dungeons & Dragons in that era - the fact that the murder victim was killed on the same night her character was killed off in the game turns out to be coincidence; a red herring. The game has a 'Killer DM,' but not literally.
The other common roleplayer stereotype, that of socially awkward geeks uncomfortable around the opposite sex, is completely subverted when the RPG club is revealed to be a hotbed (so to speak) of sexual activity, as the girl that Mike 'Smoove' Jardine thinks he's well in with is revealed to us - though not to Jardine - as two-timing him with the game's DM. This has some basis in the reality of Scottish University RPG societies of that period, if anecdotes I have heard are anything to judge by.
It is unclear whether Jardine ever went back for a second game session, but somehow it seems unlikely.
No comments:
Post a Comment