Father Brown.

I've been confined to barracks of late; old sweats – old soldiers - will know what I'm talking about as I've been laid up. I can still go into my office as it's just off the hall, in our flat, between the bathroom and the kitchen. 

So I am very comfortable in the relative luxury of our apartment and the cold weather outside. I suppose the heating bill will be high next time but it's always high.

So after I have been in here working out ideas, doing my taxes and looking after the running of our lives, I break for coffee at around 2:00 pm and sometimes switch on the television.

Not a lot on in the afternoon really, but I could always watch 'On Demand' which is most of the stuff that's been on TV over the past week. I rarely watch any of the commercial channels that way as I can't skip the commercials - you have to sit there and let them run. 

When watching one of the commercial channels live I usually pause the programme for about ten or fifteen minutes so I can skip through when watching.

One of the programmes, apart from all the quiz shows, is a kind of detective series but the PI is a catholic priest, and it's on BBC, Father Brown. 
He's a very famous detective in fiction created by GK Chesterton; he wrote many Father Brown stories and at the end of it he converted to Catholicism.

The acting is quite good and the relationships between the leading characters is amusing. It takes place in a village in the countryside and, even though it's supposed to be a small village, there is a murder every week.

I accept that it's a bit like Agatha Christie but it's a bit funny - and safe.

I have seen about 10 or so episodes but I have yet to see a black or non-white face – until today. 

Today there was a Hindu playing a wise man who was an assistant to the victim.

In fact there may be an episode somewhere with a non-white face – I don't know - but in 10 episodes I haven't seen one.

People argue that there were very few blacks in Britain in the fifties and I have to say that where I went to school I didn't see a black man, or non-white, till a Pakistani came to our school. His name was Shamshad Khan and he was from Lahore; but so what?

Here's is the school choir and you will see what I mean:

 There we are aged about 14 - I am the little fella with the greasy hair 3rd from the right at the back. Shamshad who was my friend, and told me all about the fair in Lahore, is at the front on the right.

But there were plenty of black people living here in conurbations and there are plenty today. 
There are loads of complaints about not enough variety in casting and if I was black I would be very angry and if the answer is that there are not many blacks living in small villages in Britain and even fewer in the fifties set it somewhere else.

It's shot near Birmingham which is very cosmopolitan and even though it (Father Brown) is well done it has no edge. 

Rather like the British films in last week's BAFTA presentations.

I don't expect it to be full of bad language as it's on in the afternoons but let's let it reflect the population here – now!

For your amusement here are two Father Browns of the past; Kenneth More and Alec Guinness: