Spoiler alert

Once upon a time, a disappointingly relatively brief time ago, you could sit down in front of your TV, and be surprised at what you saw.

Not shocked by a trashy dating show (or an even worse naked dating show), but surprised by almost any drama, soap opera, or just about anything non-factual.

Before the proliferation of TV channels, the tell-all internet, and a constant battle for viewers, it was perfectly normal to have almost no idea what was going to happen when you watched your favourite TV show.

Sure, the Radio Times, or your newspaper, might have hinted at what was going to happen – but crucially without giving any major clues. How times have changed.

Now, you see endless trailers for what’s going to happen, with major plot elements shown, so that you more or less know what you’ll be seeing before you even watch. Worse still, all serialised shows seem to have a ‘Next Time’ section at the end, which often resolves the cliff-hanger you watched just seconds beforehand. You just need to tune in to see the detail of how it plays out. OMG! Is Terry dead?! No, hang-on – there he is in the trailer, in a hospital bed.

A good recent example was the New Year’s Day episode of Doctor Who. Clearly, it was going to be the ‘biggie’ episode, with something major happening. It started becoming reasonably clear what that was going to be when the trailer showed a clip with the Doc talking about “the DNA of the most dangerous creature in the universe”. Hmm. Wonder what that might be?

To be honest, the sound of Dalek screeching “exterminate!” at the end of the clip wasn’t really necessary, but it did entirely give any remaining mystery a death ray blast between the eyes.

Even quite recently, broadcasters at least had the decency to flag that there were “spoilers” coming your way, in much the same way as they used to alert you to the impending announcement of the footy scores, with a cheery “if you don’t want to know the result, look away now”.

Short of not switching on your phone, laptop, or TV, for several months before a show, there’s no way you can avoid it now. “Spoiler” is a very good phrase. These mini-summaries do just that – they spoil your enjoyment of something you were looking forward to.

RIP plot. We know what’s going to happen, and I’m not happy about it.

This post first appeared as my "A wry look at the week" column, in The Mail, on Friday the 4th of January 2019. Both the version used on their website and the print version ran it as "There's no way to avoid TV spoilers", and included a picture of Jodie Whittaker as The Doctor.

Come on... it IS annoying, isn't it? But it's really hard not to watch the miniature film with all the juicy bits in when it comes on, because you're curious. Even the movies are guilty of it. I've seen trailers that looked great, only discover when watching the film that all the best bits were in that, and the full-length version is pretty average otherwise.

Still, me having a moan isn't going to change it, is it. Ooh - I've started the year by grumbling about something. Why change the habits of a lifetime, eh?

(CD A-Z: Great XTC box set "Coat Of Many Cupboards".)