I’ve watched the first couple of episodes of the new CW television series iZombie. It’s sort of a mashup of The Walking Dead and Veronica Mars if you can imagine such a thing. It’s original, I’ll give it that. It suffers from the same problems as most American TV shows do: bad writing and constant mugging on the part of the actors. I don’t know that I’ve ever explained what I mean by “mugging”.
Mugging is mostly what passes for acting here in the United States. It consists of making faces and striking poses. It’s most common in but not exclusive to young actresses. One of the reasons I find British, Canadian, and Australian television programs so much more watchable than American ones is that the acting is so much better.
Right now I’m streaming an old British detective program called Lovejoy which stars Ian McShane. Here in the States detective programs are either police procedurals or private eyes (and private eyes have almost completely disappeared) with the occasional criminology professor or physician. In the UK there are detective programs in which the detectives are gossipy old ladies, clergymen, cooks, or gardeners. There isn’t the straitjacket there is here in the States.
Lovejoy is a sort of detective program in which the detective is a slightly shady antiques dealer. I haven’t mentioned it for a while but for several years I was an antiques dealer. Part time not full time. And I wasn’t much into fine arts as Lovejoy is but I knew guys like Lovejoy in the trade. Not as handsome, of course. I was more into what I suspect the Brits might call “collectables” or just plain junk rather than antiques. Antiques of the sort that Lovejoy deals in are in very short supply here in the U. S.
Selling furniture is hard work. You frequently need to deliver your sales which means you need a truck and must be willing to carry heavy pieces. Glass and china break. I knew a number of dealers who made an amazing amount of money selling old costume jewelry. That had the advantages of being light, portable, and not particularly fragile. The margins could be very good if you knew what you were doing. It’s something about which I know nothing.
There’s a lot of money in selling fine antique jewelry. I knew a dealer or two who could carry their inventory in their pockets (and did).
