Just watched an episode of 'Vera', a British detective series. I was just thinking how much I like the British detective TV programs compared to the stuff we produce. The plot twists were absolutely brilliant. And the human drama with the regular characters they added were actually interesting, not the cliché stuff you see in the formula series produced here. Spoiler: In case you don't want the episode spoiled. So, plot twists: We see that a man is shot and killed and his two daughters taken. As things progress we find out one of the daughters was adopted from Iraq after her family was killed. There's a plot red herring, someone else wanted to adopt the girl but lost out to the stable family and a decade later he's still bothered. While it's a red herring, it does turn out he gave the girl's new name to a man in Iraq. We find out the Iraq man entered the country illegally and it looks like he's the murderer/abductor. Turns out he's the girl's only surviving brother from Iraq. [so far, standard twists] Then we find out the adopted kidnapped girl may have been in on it. The other sister is released. Next we find out the brother had been trying to be recognized as the girl's relative but the embassy he'd filed form after form with never acted. But it turns out the reason the brother's petitions were ignored is a family friend who actually is now hovering over the widowed mother, (we don't know if there is anything between them or not), worked for the embassy and was responsible the brother's petitions were ignored because he didn't want his friend (the now murdered father/husband) to lose custody of the adopted daughter. [So that was an interesting twist, but the story didn't stop there.] Turns out the natural born sister, jealous of the adopted sister and believing her boyfriend was interested in the adopted sister had been in contact with the adoptee's brother and she'd been impersonating the adopted sister. So she's the one that encouraged him to come get the adopted girl. And the fact the adopted girl had not been in contact with her brother led her to scream when he came to take her which set off the brother shooting the father and abducting the girls. It shows to go you that there are still original twists out there. As for the personal issues of the characters, I was recently bored by the personal drama on NCIS. They have such predictable personal drama with the characters it's boring. Spoiler In this episode of Vera there was some discussion of her sister trying to reach her. Vera reveals to one of the episode characters (as opposed to the regular characters) that she was an only child. It wasn't true. The episode ends with Vera about to click on her sister's FB page when she closes the notebook computer instead. Much less cliché than the relationship drama on the latest NCIS episodes.
I thought the FX series The Shield exhibited very clever writing. They'd paint Vic Mackey into a corner, and he'd always find a way to slither out of it, though not necessarily cleanly. Sure, sometimes things got far-fetched, but I think as writers we have to reach a bit. Occasionally, our efforts will stretch credibility and we need to fix it.
