I got this email yesterday from someone who read my season finale review of Moonlight:
I would just like to say that i think you should make more programs of moonlight because the program was such a big hit and it was such a thrill to watch.I am disappiont that you have ended the program and you should consider making a lot more.
yoursfaithfully
xxx (name removed to protect the innocent)
I'm not exactly sure how this (probably quite young) person got the idea from my review that I'd decided to cancel Moonlight, using my vast, vast powers, or that I made it. Was it my sentence structure?
But for them and anyone else who gets the impression from my TV reviews that I actually make the programmes I'm reviewing, I'd just like to point out that I don't. I don't cancel them either. I certainly didn't cancel Moonlight: that was CBS.
And really, if anyone's going to bring Moonlight or any other cancelled TV show back, I'm probably not the right person to do it. I'm gratified that people might think from my reviews that I'd make really great TV programmes, but I suspect I wouldn't. At least, not with my current budgets.
Let that be an end to the matter.
July 3, 2008 | Reply
Haha, that's great.
I used to get lots of emails of a similar nature when I used to help run gotfuturama.com. Somehow some (probably young and foreign) viewers thought I was something to do with running of the show and I'd get a mixture of really quite sweet emails saying how 'it my favourite tv to watch all the time' or (when it was cancelled) 'how could you stop making more. Futurama is my favourite ever. Please make more. I would pay lots to see more.'
On reflection I could have made a lot of cash - although in a very un-ethical way!
Strange how that person singled out you on a general tv/entertainment blog. At least you could see where these people found my connection.
July 3, 2008 | Reply
I was an ESL teacher before I had children, and my guess is that your very polite and rather formal correspondant is probably not a native English-speaker. He or she (probably she -- Moonlight was that kind of programme) evidently got tangled up in your elegant style and advanced vocabulary, and was left with the impression that you are a person of power and influence. Which you are. Just not in that particular sphere. (I tried to watch Moonlight, but quite apart from the squeamishness factor [mine], couldn't get over vampires that had been around for decades in some cases and centuries in others but were still so shallow. Perhaps their depth had been sucked out of them by living in California?)
July 3, 2008 | Reply
"My guess is that your very polite and rather formal correspondant is probably not a native English-speaker. "
I'd have thought so, too, if it weren't for her name and email address which are both very English.
Moonlight got better. Never great but it did get better after about the sixth episode.
July 3, 2008 | Reply
I had a Québecois student named Glenn. His parents thought English names were chic.