Well Written Distractions
During this years’ festival season, as I prepare for my first in person appearance at a festival, there are a number of expertly well written distractions to stop me from undertaking my preparation reading. Traces, written by Val McDermid and then a brand new series on Disney Plus, Tracker, written by Jeffery Deaver.
Both of these writers are primarily known for their scientific accuracy, whether it’s through dogged research that they both undertake, or people they may know, like Sue Black. This gives their shows a level of authenticity, which makes them really interesting to watch.
Tracker, though, is a little different, as Colter Shaw is a reward hunter, so moves away from the Lincoln Rhyme series that Deaver is known for. Although this is not his first adaptation, as the Bone Collector was made into a film, this is the first tv adaptation available in the UK, although I do know that a series has been made from the Bone Collector, too. As I watched the Colter Shaw series, having not read all of the books, yet, I look at the character development from the books and can see where it is going. This is a bit more difficult with Traces, though, as it has been purely made for TV and so there is not the baseline that you normally find in books. Sidekicks are key, though. In Traces, there is the forensic anthropologist and Colter has his two assistants that find him the jobs and then send him the info. It is these little details, as a fledgling writer, that make watching tv so useful. I very rarely write up tv reviews, as I know that lots of people will have probably done it already, but with Tracker being such a new series, now on episode 3, with episodes being released on a weekly basis each Wednesday, I know that my distractions will last for a little while yet.
But with all 6 episodes of Traces being freely available, I found myself binge watching it, instead of doing what I should be doing and that is a sign of good writing, with such up to date plotlines, such as incel characters and lots of different ways of making bombs. Traces, this year, has definitely been different to the cold case which underpinned the first series. It was a bit difficult to understand why the character from the first series was only in a few episodes of this one, in a virtual rerun of the first series, as we saw the trial of the suspect. Although this has been done before, it hasn’t been done often, the most notable occasion possibly Broadchurch, series 2. I hope that there will be another series of Traces and I don’t know how many episodes of Tracker have been commissioned, but I know that American series are often longer on average than the UK equivalent, although the online format has been shorter than the 24 episodes I was used to watching prior.
I’m going to end this article to ask anybody out there who may read this, when will the Bone Collector series be openly available in the UK market and if Disney Plus has one Deaver series, why not grab the other?
