Disgruntled of Stratford East

To The Producers, Sirens.

Dear Sirs,

I like to think I am not a prude. I enjoy a bit of televisual casual sex and indiscriminate violence as much as the next man. However, I finally got around to watching Episode 1 of your spunky new comedy-drama series set in the world of British paramedics, Sirens, yesterday. While enjoying the general balance of character-driven comedy and occasional slap-in-the-face reality-horror, I am writing to complain about one scene which went far beyond the pale.

The scene in question comes late in the episode, where the female police sergeant is on night duty with her colleague. He has in his possession two chocolate bars - a Bounty and a Double Decker (both of which, if you don't mind me saying so, seem specifically chosen for their double-entendre value, but let's move on). She engages him in a long conversation about how, despite being an attractive, healthy young woman, she is "getting" no sexual action whatsoever.

All of this is very bathetic and sweet of course, and I have no problem with it whatsoever. But then - and this is the source of my complaint - there is a lingering shot of her biting into the Double Decker.

How can you live with yourselves? Did you not consider that you might have had viewers who can, and have, gotten hard-ons for pieces of cake among your audience? Did it not come up at any script meetings that there are those of us who would kill seventeen hobos for a guilt-free Double Decker? Did you not for a moment stop to consider that there might even be those among your target demographic for whom the sensual connection between sex and chocolate is the kind of living nightmare that makes us unexpectedly horny in a confectionery aisle, and very very confused during Fashion Week?

No, sirs, I contend that you did not. You were just thinking of the titillation value, and so you wantonly showed a chocolate bar being consumed, on screen, by a consenting and sex-starved young woman.

I am prepared to give Episode 2 of your show a viewing, because I like to think I'm a fair-minded individual, and there is always the possibility that the disgusting chocolate-porn shot crept in accidentally during the editing stage. But I warn you - should there be any more graphic chocolate consumption on display in that episode, I will find myself forced to take further and more drastic action.

Yours,

Disgruntled of Stratford East.