I stopped watching the American sitcom Two and a Half Men just after Charlie Sheen left the show in 2011.
Sheen may have been a pain in several body parts at the same time to the show’s creator, cast and crew but, to my mind, his character was the heart of the show. And Sheen is, in my opinion, a much better actor than Ashton Kutcher who replaced him in the series.
I also felt that the scripts had deteriorated from diverting, above-average sitcom fare with plausible plots into excuses for stringing together a series of crude jokes.
Anyway, as I say, my solution to not liking the show was to switch it off.
My favourite program right now — in fact, my only “must-see” TV — is the British sci-fi drama Doctor Who.
While the occasional episode makes me cringe, I’m generally enjoying the show, the characters and the direction in which it is going.
Others disagree.
I understand that long-time viewers of Doctor Who, which celebrated its 50th anniversary last year, feel some form of ownership over it, and have quite fixed ideas of what it should be about, how the central character should be played, what sort of stories should be told, and whether those stories fit into the canon.
Most of the online criticism I see — and some of it is quite venomous — is directed at showrunner Steven Moffat. Clearly a some people don’t like the direction in which he has taken the show, and they have taken to social media to say so.
Week after week, they deconstruct the latest episode and spell out exactly where Moffat has one wrong and why they hate them so much.
It would be much simpler for those people to stop watching. Unless you are paid to do so — as increasingly fewer people are — watching a show you don’t like is a bit like continuing to hit your head against a brick wall long after you’ve established that it hurts.
I know this is not particularly sophisticated advice, but it seems to me that some people just don’t get it.
