It's murder - Midsomer-style.

The producer of the TV series "Midsomer Murders" has been sacked for saying that the reason there has never been a black or Asian character in the programme is that "it wouldn't be an English village" otherwise.  Once again, someone pilloried for telling an obvious truth.  Black and Asians are (unfortunately) not spread evenly throughout the country, they are concentrated in the towns and cities, and there are plenty of rural areas where a non-white face is never seen.  That's the reality.  So if you're making a programme set in what is meant to be a typical English rural village, you've got to reflect that reality or lose credibility.  It would be just as unbelievable to make an inner city drama where the majority of the characters were not immigrants, or to introduce a black face into a Jane Austen style period drama - it simply wouldn't ring true.  The suggestion is that this is racist, but of course that's the standard knee-jerk fall-back position these days - it isn't racist, it's realist.