The more films or TV shows you watch, the more you realise that everything follows a pattern. The couple that seem to hate each other will get together. The plain Jane will suddenly scrub up to be beautiful. Remember Guy Pearce-era Neighbours and you get my gist. Soon you start to notice lazy plot items, and the end is sure to be nigh.

Impressionism appears to have passed the popular film media behind. Never will you see a mundane act tackled without it leading to the same fucking conclusion. If a character is washing up, you can guarantee they will cut themselves on glass or a sharp knife. Should a cut occur, the house will have a full first aid kid with bandages and rafts of gamgee. A burst water pipe in the garden? Clearly a dead body is down there. Milk is either off or empty. Rubbish bags always burst. Mobile phones have no signal or no battery. Mundane always leads to a plot twist.

Has anyone ever just used a bathroom in a film without needing to talk to themselves in a mirror? If someone announces they are washing clothes, secret love message will be scooped out of a pocket. No one just reads a book, it has to be a metaphor. Bills are always overdue. Getting drunk means clutching a toilet and refusing to move for a few days – strange, as I know people who get drunk, don’t vomit and manage to go to work with a hangover. Even eating isn’t safe – ketchup is pulled by gravity out of a bun onto a shirt or tie. The majority of film stars just hilariously burn food, and don’t get me started on crisps put in bowls. In bowls? Why?

The exceptions appear to be European art films and depressing soaps. In Walford you can witness people cleaning with even more misery than you would usually associate with such a meaningless task. Watch a European Art film and everything is reversed. For hours a woman will stare endlessly at the washing up, each bowl symbolic of her wasted youth, a spoon a reflection of her aged face. I once heard of a two-hour film all about a married couple watching a potato boil. I’m not stupid, I know it’s a metaphor, but a) you do not boil a potato for two hours, and b) who the fuck watches food boil? Maybe that’s why I cant cook rice.

If art imitates life, where are the boring Sundays where all you do is eat crisps and watch Antiques Roadshow? Without wanting to sound like a Mike Leigh film, just let people talk while they do normal things. Or maybe just surprise us occasionally with a ring not falling down a plug hole.