Brigitte Bowers: Sex, lies and murder lurk in my living room

Sunday will mark the end of “Mad Men,” though I suspect some networks will offer copycats for those baby boomers who are unwilling to let the 1970s go. I am oddly proud of having been a “Mad Men” fan from the very first episode, though I watched it only because it aired on the same network and night as “Breaking Bad.”

So now, after Sunday, I will be left with no AMC shows to watch. I am still waiting for FX to air a follow-up to the wonderfully twisted program “Fargo,” but until then network television will offer few opportunities to sate my dark side.

And so I suppose I will find myself indulging more frequently in my favorite ID TV programs. ID stands for Investigation Discovery, which suggests, at least to me, in-depth crime reporting that will somehow illuminate the truth about the evil within us all. But of course ID TV does something else entirely: It exploits tragedy for the purpose of entertainment. I am well aware of ID TV’s nefarious aim, but I am nevertheless incapable of taking the high road and changing the channel when programs such as “Most Evil” and “Handsome Devils” worm their way into my living room.

On ID TV, women often do terrible things to each other or to the unlucky men who find themselves involved in their lives. When women are not killing their male lovers or other women, though, they are the unsuspecting and innocent victims of malevolent men. To descend into the universe of ID TV is to enter a place where sex, lies and murder are always lurking in the master bathrooms and pool houses of suburbia. It is a world where everyone is depraved, except for narrators such as “Deadly Women’s” Candice Long, a former FBI profiler. Candice is sweet-looking, with long lashes and a pixie haircut, and she is fond of clichés and weighty soundbites. “She was never satisfied,” Candice might say, “even when she had it all.” Or “She complained to the hangman that the noose was too tight, but she would soon learn just how tight that noose could get.”

I am not sure why I am drawn to these programs. I suspect it is the same macabre curiosity that drove me to read Vincent Bugliosi’s book about Charles Manson, “Helter Skelter,” when I was 15 years old, even though I suffered from nightmares for years afterward. I am not proud of this inclination. Shows such as “Dates from Hell” rely on the violent misfortune of others for their existence.

Still, it is somehow comforting to be able to snuggle in bed with a cup of chamomile tea and see what sometimes happens to other, less lucky people. “Behind Mansion Walls” ensures me that being rich might not always be as fun as it seems. I am virtuous by comparison to the women who indulge in ill-advised romances on “Deadly Affairs,” “Wicked Attraction” and “Secret Lives of Stepford Wives.”

Confident that my own neighbors are good, quiet citizens, I can nevertheless contemplate the hidden perversities of the people on someone else’s street in “Fear Thy Neighbor” and “The Nightmare Next Door.” My marriage can’t help but look flawless when contrasted with the unions between the hapless wives and husbands in “Fatal Vows,” “Deadly Devotion,” “Who the (Bleep) Did I Marry?” and “Happily Never After.” The children I have raised are angels when I ponder the depravity on display in “Blood Relatives,” “Evil Twins” and “Evil Kin.” And then there are those programs that make me profoundly happy to be living in California, such as “Alaska: Ice Cold Killers” and “Southern Fried Homicide.”

The titles of the shows, of course, are what draw me in first. Who, after all, can resist “Beauty Queen Murders” or “Frenemies: Loyalty Turned Lethal?” It seems that many women cannot, with some estimates ranking ID TV third in ratings for women ranging from their mid-20s to their mid-50s.

At home, though, I am the only person who watches what my husband calls The Murder and Mayhem Channel. My kids refuse to be in the room with “Sins and Secrets.” My husband seems genuinely alarmed by “Wives with Knives,” though he never sits with me to watch it.

I suppose that ID TV will wear itself out one day. Already, the network is turning to 19th-century murder cases to fill the ghoulish appetites of its voracious audience. There can only be so many homicide cases in one year, and with the national murder rate in decline, there might not be enough new stories in the coming years to supply an entire network with 24-hour programming, even with reruns. I suppose that is when I will have to turn to the Mauling and Mayhem Channel, Animal Planet, to watch “Human Prey” and “Your Worst Animal Nightmares.”

This story was originally published May 15, 2015 at 11:00 AM with the headline "Brigitte Bowers: Sex, lies and murder lurk in my living room."