What's you favourite tv cliche...

[YesSirICanBoogie]

Any woman visibly pregnant will give birth - probably in a very public place such as a taxi while having complications and getting stuck in traffic on the way to hospital and panting lots.

Pregnancy is sped up, bump appears overnight.

Girls only go on the pill behind their parents back and their parents freak out. Annoys me because I was on the pill from the age of 13 for medical reasons, I don't know how I'd have coped with life without that little tablet!

Children always disappear shortly after birth.

People come into the programme with nothing, they set up home in an empty house, perfectly done up over night, then when they leave they go with just a suitcase and the house is empty again when the next person moves in.

Tsar- "Then they leave, taking only a small bag of things"

When Julie left Kirk in Corrie this week she had ONE small box of things, most of which was taken up with a red glittery cowboy hat. She had lived with him for A WHOLE YEAR!

Have often thought that doctor one when watching Home and Away. When the character Rachel arrived in Summer Bay she was a psychiatrist. How fortunate that when she got disqualified from practising that branch of medicine for having a relationship with a patient, she could continue as an ER doctor in that very same hospital!

And another thing.....women on TV come out of showers or baths wrapped in robe/towel and with supposedly wet hair in a turban, but still clearly in full make-up. As they also are when apparently waking up in the morning and getting out of bed, yawning and pulling 'I'm so sleeeeepy' faces, while wearing lavish unsmudged mascara and lip-gloss.

Doh!

Can I just confirm (as an American) that we do in fact say 'goodbye' at the end of phone conversations! No idea why they never do on TV, I find it just was weird as everyone else

Glad I read the rest of the thread and found out someone beat me to it!

(and we have curtains/blinds too)

Oh, am on a roll here....has anyone noticed that it's also the law in the aforementioned Midsomer Murders that any spooky night scene MUST feature at least one contribution from a very vocal fox? The self-same 'bark' eventually started appearing in other programmes too....time to change the SFX, please!

PS Hello Katisha!

And another one....

On American shows (particularly sitcoms), if someone shows up with an English accent, it's always very a very posh accent, and the person is always more sophisticated and quite proper/snotty. . .causing much mirth and hilarity among the main characters.

And has anyone mentioned the Tardis-style houses in all soaps yet? That's my favourite game - working out how many rooms a tiny two up two down terrace must in fact have to accommodate Ken, Deirdre, Tracy, Amy, Blanche, Peter and Adam (I think that was the Barlows' record!)...

Further to the 'soap-opera face', there was a very funny bit in the Guardian a while ago about the 'Pressed Lips of Justice', as perfected by John Nettles in Midsomer Murders. V. amusing, I thought - here

There is also (almost exclusively in American shows/films) the SWTAB - sheet wrapped tightly around bosom, whereby the (carefully made-up) vacuous moppet, having stretched and yawned cutely without hideous morning breath, trips off to the bathroom with said sheet.

Hi Thrice. Can't talk - the police are here so I am ignoring them while carrying on making a banana loaf...

Don't tell them anything, Katisha - just snarl rudely and they will be terribly polite to you, just like they are on the telly. As all police are in RL, of course - not a baton in sight....

Babies on telly always sleep in their own cot, in their own room right through the night the moment they are brought home from the hospital.

In soaps nobody ever books a holiday a few months in advance then do sensible things like book time off work. No, they just announce they are off when they are about to get in the taxi to the airport.

Thricewoe... rofl at "Ah, Jim Bergerac! The leather jacket. The burgundy car. The Newman-blue eyes gazing out with wry amusement - broken by a flicker of longing whenever jewel thief Liza Goddard hove into view - yet always conveying the essential nobility of a man taxed at source amid a sea of fiscal bounders." from that article you linked to. My dh is from Jersey and they were always bumping in to them filming Bergerac. Love the bit about a man taxed at source amid a sea of fiscal bounders

Duchess - unless the baby has something wrong with it or the storyline is going to be about post-natal depression.

If someone coughs into a hankie / clutches their stomach / rubs their forehead / wobbles a bit when walking they have a life threatening condition and may die before the end of the episode.

If someone orders a soft drink in a pub they are a recovering alcoholic.

Detectives always drive lovely old classic cars.

Was that a fox in Midsomer? We always wondered what that noise was ...

Speaking of classic cars, there's always Morse to consider. Anyone noticed that whenever he fell for a woman she was inevitably the murderer? They'd go from "I have tickets for the opera tonight, I wondered if you'd like to join me?" to Morse standing dejected outside the cells, red roses in hand, while Ms. Murderer sat with tears streaming down her face telling him how sorry she was, the defeaning sound of Wagner soaring in the background ...

I do have a weakness for telly detectives, though - especially Columbo with his "just one more thing" as he turned back to ask the suspect the killer question, which always seemed to involve a watch smashed at the exact time of the murder?

Deafening, even!

Ahh, that $%$%$ fox. I'm banned from ranting about it now at home .

Also on a Midsomer theme, local fetes/flower shows/book launches (a famous author, with a bookshop, in the middle of nowhere?!)/pagan celebrations cannot be along to take place without at least one person getting murdered in the tea tent.

Maybe it's Joyce all along. She seems to be (suspiciously in my opinion) involved in them all. Barnaby - your missus is a psychopath !

someone must have mentioned this one already - but it's the "buckets of water and plenty of towels NOW!!!" request when someone goes into labour in a drama -

and in disaster dramas the main characters only ever have ONE child so that when they are running away escaping the earthquake/tidal wave/aliens/general evil, they can dramatically run with said child in their arms looking totally heroic and nurturing, (without having to constantly turn round to bark at older siblings - "WILL YOU *KING HURRY UP AND STOP MUCKING ABOUT!!" and NO YOU CANNOT GO ON THE LAPTOP TO DO MSN!!!!!)

Has anyone seen Without a Trace?
Every single missing person photo, in every episode, is a head shop on a blue or white background. Do missing people go for convenient headshots just before disappearing?

BOFF - I always thought that about Rachels Most Convenient Baby. So unrealistic.

Oh, and people in America actually don't say bye before hanging up, at least in LA they don't. Took me ages to get used to that.